Episode 297: Balance of Educational Philosophy
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This episode is brought to you by Awaken, a Living Books conference. Come together to deepen your understanding of what it means to be awakened to the fullness of a Living Books life. Awaken, a Living Books educational conference, is traveling in 2025.

Join Liz, Emily, and Nicole of A Delectable Education in our very own hometown, Johnson City, Tennessee, for an in-person conference. Featuring multiple speakers and vendors to inspire and encourage the Charlotte Mason community, this two-day weekend event, April 4th and 5th, 2025, will feature all-day immersion lessons and a variety of workshops and demonstrations.

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Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I'm Emily Kaiser and I'm here with Nicole Williams and Liz Gatrell. And today we're also joined by repeat podcast guest, Jessica Becker. Hello. Hi, Jessica. Good

Good to be here. It's good to have you. So I have to start this episode with a story. We asked to interview Jessica, but basically to give her a chance to tell us about an idea that she has had percolating that I think happened before, but we became aware of this idea when we were driving back from the Awaken Conference last year. Nicole and Jessica and I were all in a car for a lot of hours solving all the problems of the universe. And Jessica said,

I would love to talk about, or I don't even think you volunteered. You just wanted us to talk about it. I think so. To talk about Charlotte Mason's words in Parents and Children on the differing schools of philosophy. So Jessica brought up this idea of the

two differing schools of philosophy of education and Charlotte Mason's ideas of via media or the middle way. And we thought that fit perfectly into a season of,

where we're talking all about balance. We want to avoid the extremes on one side or the other, but to come up with a balanced path. And so we're going to be talking about our balanced view of education today. Yes. Yeah. So good. Yeah. I was definitely trying to put a plug in. You guys should talk about this topic because...

Right after the Soiree conference in 2019, my reading group that I have here locally was starting volume two. And we had a huge influx of reading group members after that conference.

And we started reading volume two. And if you've ever read it before, it is very philosophical, very abstract. And she is very much assuming that you are up to date with these philosophies and kind of know what she's talking about. There's not a lot of definitions, not a lot of giving you a lot on it. And part of I told my group, you should be flattered that she thinks that, you know, all of this stuff.

But we don't anymore. And as a leader, I was a little like, ooh, maybe this isn't a good volume to be in. We were trying to read the volumes in order, and I really wanted to do it that way. But the timing with all these brand new people to Charlotte Mason and being just in the thick of all this philosophy, I was like, maybe this isn't the best volume to be in. Should we skip it? Should we come back to it later? Yeah.

But we kind of stuck with it. And I was like, you know, this is what we're going to have to do. Like when you come to something and you're not sure what it is, we're going to research it. We're going to look it up. We're going to try to wrap our brains around what, why is she talking about these, these words, these philosophers? So,

So we started doing that. And I noticed there wasn't a whole lot online either. I really wanted like as a facilitator to have someone already written a lot about it or just there just wasn't. So you just kind of watch yourself and think of it. So that's why I was putting a plug in you guys. I was like, I think you should have a podcast episode in case anyone else is in volume two.

But we had this light bulb moment as a group. I don't know how many months in we were to this and people were so good to faithfully show up and just kind of wade through the waters together and

And we had this moment where we were like, oh my goodness, I think she's trying to make a logical argument for her entire method. She's been building up this entire time to that. And it was just such a beautiful realization that that's what she's trying to do here. And of course, she's got a whole lot of other things going on in that volume too. But we realized this

this is important and it's coming right after her first volume where she's laying it all out. And then volume two, she's really showing just almost logically deducing it. And it's just been really, it was really neat to see that. And it just led to so many good discussions. And one of the discussion topics we often got to was the balance balancing between two extremes. And this whole idea of the via media, which is something that really stood out to us.

Um, so early on in volume two, it's actually in the section and maybe it's more a little bit in the middle. It's called the faith and duty section. So think about those two things there that we hold in balance, you know, faith and duty. And that's a lot of where the quotes, um, in this particular episode will be pulled from is that particular section. There's actually several chapters in that particular, you know, vein of thought, um,

But she says early on in that faith and duty chapter that probably the chief source of weakness in our attempt to formulate a science of education is that we do not perceive that education is the outcome of philosophy. We deal with the issue and ignore the source.

So hence, our efforts lack continuity and definite aim. We are content to just pick up a suggestion here, a practical hint there, without even troubling ourselves to consider what is the scheme of life of which such hints exist.

And suggestions are the output. And I remember underlining that quote, we deal with the issue, ignore the source. We don't go to the, we don't realize there's an underlying philosophy. And I realized that's what I was tempted to do as the facilitator of this group was skip the philosophy, get to the how to's, but we can't do that because we're, we're, you know, every other person who comes to Charlotte Mason. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's all right. Yeah.

Exactly. Yes. We want to deal with the issues, but we don't realize that to deal with an issue, you have to get to the source first. And you have to deal with the source of the issue in order to deal with the issue. And for her, she felt that the source is the philosophy. So you just kind of see like this aimless cycle where we are not seeing opportunities.

our methods as coming from philosophy. So we're just dealing with issues. And then she says the fruit of that is that our efforts lack continuity and they lack definite aim.

I think that describes so much of us. Like our efforts feel fruitless. They don't feel progressive. And like they're like one thing is growing into the next leading to the next because there is no definite aim. And that's what a philosophy gives you is that continuity gives you an aim, you know, and that's, you know, often, you know,

what we are lacking, you know, as homeschooling moms. Right. Which is exactly what she says in the beginning of her first volume when she talks about a system versus method and that a method is, you know, you know the goal, the end goal, you have that in view, and then the means to get there. And I just think of how many Charlotte Mason practitioners call

her method and applied philosophy. Like that's a better term than method or it's more descriptive. And that's exactly what it is. It's rooted in this philosophy and has very practical outworkings. So bear with us today. If this seems a little impractical, it actually is supremely practical and has, will bear fruit and find application in all areas of your home educating and beyond. Yeah.

Yes, absolutely. It's so practical because when you are on this cycle, I think when we feel aimless, it does affect the atmosphere of our home and the atmosphere of our lessons. You know, I thought.

you know, how, when we live in this cycle where you feel like you're not making progress or you have no definite aim, there's no continuity, there's no structure. It does stir something in our hearts and it stirs something that's in our children's hearts or our learners hearts, whoever you happen to be teaching. And,

But sometimes I don't know about you guys. It can feel easier to stay in the cycle just because it's familiar and not want to break out of it, even though it's exhausting you. It's what you know. You know, I think that's one of the hardest things to overcome. I like what she says, too, that the temptation is just to pick up hints and suggestions. Yeah.

hints and suggestions here and there kind of piecing these things together. But if you don't know the philosophy that informs them, it doesn't matter, you know?

I'm just thinking about this is like every mom who comes up with a problem in their school day and turns to social media and that's all they're picking up are these just hints, right? You know, how somebody else has worked it out in their home and they are lacking the confidence that comes from having a grounded philosophy. Yeah.

I love that word confidence because I think that's what we often do lack as homeschooling moms. I remember, Emily, when I first met you, one of the first things you ever told me was the most insecure people on the planet are homeschooling moms. And then you became one and you're like, oh, my gosh, I am suddenly so insecure. You got a taste of it.

And it's so true. And I think so much of it is because we feel like it's all up to us. You know, it rests on our shoulders and that's the beauty of having a philosophy and knowing what your philosophy, I mean, we all have one, but knowing what it is and having really

intentionally adopted it. It's this thing outside of yourself, you know, that you're leaning into instead of this burden being placed upon you as the mom. And I think that does, it does, it lends confidence, you know, it helps with that. So she says that,

The danger with the picking up the hints and the suggestions is that we're missing the philosophy. It actually is what makes the hints and the suggestions effective to begin with. You can try. It's like whenever I think we've all been and you tried something someone has suggested, but you don't really understand the foundation. And so it doesn't work for you. And so you just kind of assume, well, this doesn't work for me.

This isn't a good fit, you know? And sometimes it's not that it doesn't work for you. It's that you missed the broader paradigm that causes it to be effective. So we have to know philosophy. And I was realizing at the end of volume two, you know, every mother has to be a philosopher because in order to know philosophy, you have to be willing to engage with it. And I think we typically think of philosophy as,

as this really stodgy stuffy thing that only people with PhDs do. But the root, I mean, the word itself comes right from the Greek word, philosophia, which is love of wisdom. That's what philosophy means.

So a philosopher is just a lover of wisdom. And I think that, of course, should be true of all of us. And you were talking before about her method being applied philosophy. You know, that's wisdom, you know, is applying what we know, applying truth. And how do we apply it to our living? That is probably the most practical thing I can think of is knowing how to apply what you know to what you do. And that is actually wisdom.

a huge part of what philosophy is. It's to love wisdom, which is that applied knowledge. So we're going to be philosophers today, you guys. Yes.

All right. We're going to dabble a little bit with some philosophies because they're there right there in the volumes. And there is a lot more practical application to them. So just hang on. She says that there's something we first kind of have to relinquish a little bit. She says in volume two that we need not aspire to a complete and exhaustive code of educational laws.

This will come to us duly when humanity has, so to speak, fulfilled itself. Meantime, we have enough to go on if we would believe it.

And I love here, there's just something we kind of have to let go of. It's the things that we don't know yet. And until the end of times and the world is done, there is more that will be discovered. My husband's in the medical profession. And one of the things that can really plague medical providers is what if there's a new study? I mean, a new study can come out at any moment that might change the recommendations or change a treatment plan. And you really have to fight that

the insecurity that can come from all the things you don't know, you know, the what ifs, the things I haven't discovered yet, that you work with what you do know, and we don't know all the things and we're still learning all the things, you know, but really instead of letting that paralyze us,

I think we're just to let it free us. Here is where faith comes in, that God has put you in a certain time of history that has discovered certain things. And that's where he placed you. And we work with the things that we do know and the things that have been discovered. So not to let yourself be completely consumed with what you don't know yet, or we haven't understood yet, but just go with where you're at and what you do understand like in this moment. And I think that's a really important,

important thing that she brings up. So yes, is there more we can discover? Sure. But we're going to work with what we have. So once we relinquish that, our calling, she says, is threefold here. What we have to do, she writes, is to gather together and order our resources. And then the second thing is to put the first thing foremost and all things in sequence.

And then thirdly, we are to see that education is neither more nor less than the practical application of our philosophy. Hence, if our educational thought is to be sound and effectual, we must look to the philosophy which underlies it and must be in a condition to trace every counsel of perfection for the bringing up of children to one or other of the two schools of philosophy of which it must needs be the outcome.

So I think this is really interesting. She says we have to be in a condition to do this, to trace every practice back to one. And she claims there are only really two schools of philosophy that we can trace these practices back to. And it kind of makes me laugh to say we have to be in a condition to be able to do that. We need to know what these philosophies are so that we can trace our practices back to see what are our practices rooted in, you know? Right.

Oh, and that's where we were in those early days. And that volume two group, we were like, we are not in the condition to do this, but we're going to get in the condition to do this. Oh my goodness. So,

But she says, what are the two schools of philosophy? We're going to get into that in just a second. But I thought it was interesting that she says there are just two and that we can trace them back to those two things. And of course, she's going to offer this third way, of course. But I'm just curious because I know you guys obviously work with so many parents. Yeah.

And how do you see this working out, like the lack of tracing something back to a philosophy? So many ways. I see moms who are gathering friends' pieces of advice and buying this and buying that and piling everything together, but then they don't know where to go. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

That's one way I see it. Or just, you know, switching from plan to plan constantly because they don't really know where they're headed. And I feel like if you said tracing it back to the source, if you don't know the purpose, then none of it makes sense. Yeah.

I think also people failing to value certain parts of the feast, as we call it, that seem less pragmatic because they aren't seeing how it's about so much more than just this specific subject. Mm-hmm.

I'm thinking of multiple examples right now. I'm trying to pick just one, but like a common one, like why study Latin? You know, this isn't relevant to us anymore. And I love that she specifically says about what we have no right to choose, which are that, which of the subjects to include or exclude from the feast. And she uses Latin as an example of we need to, because we never know what is going to be the touch spring of our child's life and

And I think that is an outpouring of philosophy, just like failing to see that big picture of how everything fits together and why it's important to include a broad feast and one that might include a so-called dead language. One of the ways that I see it is through the kids who grow up with said education, because we're so against the idea of kids just gathering knowledge for the sake of knowledge, for the

But we're not really giving them anything besides that if we are just giving them the material without the philosophy behind it. And so that's kind of where I see the breakdown if we don't have that. Yeah.

I've seen all of this in my own journey, you know. Another one, and I think what really led us to even start the podcast, and we have had an emphasis on Charlotte Mason's philosophy from day one. We may never have explicitly talked about these two schools that we're going to talk about today, but we would see these moms floundering in our library where they're

they're trying to do Charlotte Mason. They're following a certain curriculum and something, there's just some roadblock with one of their children. And because they don't know the philosophy, they don't see the why behind why, why are we including this subject? Why are we including this resource? What purpose is it fulfilling? How does it, how is it meeting my child in this, you know, what are the principles behind it? They were,

stagnant. They could, they were paralyzed. They could not choose another thing to replace or to, or even to help remove the obstacle for their child. Yeah. Right. So I think those are all really practical things that we encounter and probably all of us have dealt with to some degree or another. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it adds confusion. And you said paralysis and it muddies the waters. And again, it pulls you away from confidence and walking and courage and confidence and more into insecurity, confusion and feeling defeated even before you've begun. Yeah.

You're a root word person, but correct me if I'm wrong. I'm going out on a limb here for my very limited Latin confidence to come from confide, like with faith. Yes. With faith. Good for you. Yes, absolutely. Yes. This is what she's saying here is it is a, it's a, it is a step of faith, but we can walk boldly in that faith. Yes. Yes. That we have enough to go on if we would just believe it.

And I think we just think as moms, if I just, I just need a little more, if I just understood more, if I just had a little bit more, I would be able to do this thing. You know, when really it's like, no, you have what you need. It's just like the walk, the Christian walk where we've been given everything we need for living and godliness. You know, it's just a matter of walking and the belief that we really do have that and the confidence that it's really there. And that's, I think what she's really calling us to here is you have what you need.

We just need to walk forward through it. And here are some, you know, practical ways of doing that. And one of the ways is to trace things back and that you are capable as a mom of doing that. You can do that. You can trace it back to philosophy. And it might be simpler than you think, because she thinks there's only two schools of philosophy that you even need to worry about.

And here, of course, there's many philosophical movements, but she feels you can really group them all into these two categories. And she says, right after saying that we need to trace every council for the bringing up of children to one or two schools of philosophy, she gives us those two schools. And she says, is our system of education to be the issue of naturalism or of idealism? Or is there indeed a media via? So when we were...

um, reading through this as a group, we decided to do some deep dives into naturalism and idealism to try to figure out what she was talking about and why it was so important to her to talk about it for quite a long time. Um, I am not a philosophy major. Um, I have come to love philosophy the more I have read it. Um, but from just a lay person's viewpoint on these things, um,

We're going to dive a little bit in the episode today with naturalism and into idealism, just so we can kind of sort of understand what she's talking about so that we can do this tracing back.

So the first she talks about is naturalism. And you can probably guess from the title what it sort of is talking about. But it actually traces really far back, further back than I realized historically, all the way back pre-Socrates to some of the philosophers like Thales and Hexagoras and Democritus, which I think most people have probably never heard of unless you've read Plutarch. Yeah.

And that an exagoras was one of the tutors of one of our Plutarch's lives last year. But those are very less. We don't most people don't know those names. Yes, I believe so. Mr. Mind was it or something like that. Yeah.

But more familiar to people might be what came from those early forms of naturalism, which were movements like Epicureanism, materialism, Marxism, and that very talked about thing, secular humanism. Those are all offshoots of the ideas of naturalism.

So while it began a long time ago, it's really been refined and developed by different scientific movements and thought movements even up to today. And so at its core, naturalism basically believes that nature is all that exists. And then anything that we would call supernatural doesn't actually exist.

And so because anything that isn't just purely materialism or sorry, isn't purely material with matter perceived matter, um, because those things don't really exist, then that also means that things like, um, ideas and emotions also don't exist. They are just byproducts of the brain. They're not things outside of us acting on us. They are things our brain is kind of just constructing.

So if you hold to naturalism, you're going to have viewpoints like the universe has either always existed or it had a very natural scientific sort of origin. You will see life is kind of just a blind product of just natural processes or luck or fate, however you want to say that. Right.

Definitely the development of natural selection and evolution added on to this. But more importantly for Charlotte Mason kind of ideas here, a naturalist and this kind of a naturalist, someone who adheres to naturalism,

They believe that human beings have no independent soul or spirit, but are just the material brain. Like you are pretty much not much more than your brain, which then controls your actual physical body. And so this affects how we see ideas and that they aren't outside of us. They are constructions of our brains. Our brains make ideas instead of ideas being something that are impacting our brains, right?

So the issue with that is that if everything that is real, that the only reality is what your brain makes, that means you are responsible for your own reality. So if you want to be happy, you make yourself happy. And so life becomes just a series of trying to develop relationships.

the life you want, self-actualization. It's very much going to be thinking about brain development, body wellness, life is what you make it kind of things. And so there's some strengths here in that obviously in education, it's good to think about the brain and the body. Charlotte Mason talks a lot about those things. They are certainly a part of our children and their development, you know? So, I mean, we don't want to educate children

in some sort of like, you know, going against modern brain science or what we know about health, right? And the physical development of children. So that this is good. But of course, the weaknesses here that she talks about is that when it's too much to that extreme, and we're just thinking of children as brains, basically walking brains, walking bodies, and

it's going to affect the way that you educate them. There's going to be this heavy emphasis on, you know, facts, information, memorization, and something that she calls utilitarian view of education, where it's only valuable if it's useful. So things that don't have a material usefulness to society kind of get the punt, you know, things like literature, you know, what's the point of Shakespeare? You brought up Latin, you know, if it doesn't have this obvious utility, you know,

it's gone, you know? And it can also lead to something called specialization where we only engage with subjects in a very specialized kind of way. And I remember saying is 21st century America. Yes. Very much involved in this particular school of thought. Exactly. Yes. It is very much how we are educating. Very relevant today. Yes. Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Which makes sense, you know, with the secular humanism that is prominent and prevalent now. We've taken what can be a good thing, which is being aware of our physical bodies and our brains, but taking it in isolation, it's too far. It's too far to the extreme. And it's neglecting things that are also important. Right.

So that's naturalism. So I'm curious, can you think of other practices that you would call an offshoot of naturalism? Have you encountered that in your own schooling or like growing up or in your, I mean, we can be confessional here in our own homeschools. Yeah.

I'm kind of thinking as a blind person how much I have to trust other people's perceptions. And I think, wow, if I really had to prove everything was material and never use my imagination at all. And, you know, I did that talk about imagination saying these very things that life is more material.

We do actually believe things that we can't explain, see that are not seen under a microscope. And we know they're real, you know. And I've read naturalists who try to explain every emotion as a bunch of chemical reactions in your body and your brain. And so you do read it even in Christian therapy and counseling books, right?

trying to explain our reactions to things as purely physiologic. Is that what you mean? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Well, I was just thinking after reading through this again, how much it neglects moral formation when we are just seeing kids as embodied beings.

you know, or their own bodies. Character and spiritual formation would, would kind of be, well, it's only what you make of it. Right. And so it kind of becomes this, it can also become utilitarian. We only talk about it as far as it's useful, you know? Yeah. So I think that can go the other way. And it keeps, it keeps life defined to just what we experience while we're conscious and

And when we're dead, there is nothing else, you know, the whole idea of love or even courage or compassion is non-existent. And when you really evaluate some of the policies, even of our government, trying to legislate morality, um,

this is their philosophy. It, you know, it's all about what you can naturally experience and see. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's just a real danger when, um,

We only see value in something when there's a use for it, a perceived use for it. And I think that obviously has had some really horrifying results, especially in the last century, when things that were not seen as valuable or useful were just ended.

And so naturalism is going to very naturally do that. Yeah. The specialization, we see this even, even in Charlotte Mason circles, you know, I trying to identify what is our child's gifting. We're identifying that and then trying to put them in the way of developing that,

Really, really early. Yes. Yeah. Well, my child's not going to go into a STEM field, so I'm just going to drop science this year. Yes. And not realizing, you know, just the joy of learning those ideas for themselves. Yeah. Exactly. I'm really glad you brought up that. Specialization, I feel, is a really, really huge thing right now where we want to get our kids on this track. And I think it comes from fear that they...

you know, won't become, they won't get into college, they won't get the career they want, or something like that. And we forget, again, that they're not just walking brains, they're whole people. And some of those other subjects could be forming them and shaping them in really important ways, even if they don't end up going into a field that is like that, you know, we need the influencing and the shaping of so many different things, especially in areas where we are weak. And why do we feel like the weak areas are

should get the least amount of attention, you know, like maybe because it's weak. That's why we should spend some time on it. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. And so I think it's interesting. They were even seeing that back in her day. And so she felt that it was dangerous and it was something to warn parents about. And we're to look at a curriculum, look at ideas, look at the way you're teaching. And is it rooted more in that kind of the thought of a child seeing a child as just a body, just a brain? And that is it.

So that's one end of the spectrum. And then you go all the way to the other end of the spectrum. And it's the other school of philosophy that she talks about, which is idealism.

And this one traces back to some more familiar names like Plato. He thought that you can only achieve full reality in thought. So it's the exact opposite. Whereas full reality is only in what is matter and perceived by the senses with naturalism and idealism is the complete opposite. Descartes kind of famously immortalized idealism when he said, I think there

therefore, I am. So your reality as a person is all rooted in your consciousness, your mind, and your thoughts. And really nothing else exists. Things only exist as far as our own perceptions of those things, which is a really crazy, mind-blowing kind of idea. But you can kind of think of it simply as it's just the other end of the spectrum from naturalism. Now we're elevating things like

ideas as being the only thing. So if ideas and thoughts are making up fundamental reality, then we can never be sure that matter or anything in the outside world even really exists because the only things that are real with idealism are mental entities, not the physical things. And so what this kind of affects is that existence is tied to experience. Okay.

So experience becomes the value here. And so obviously there are some strengths to this.

It's great to have an emphasis on the power of things like ideas and thoughts and human experience. And this is going to leave a little bit more room for the spiritual life of a child. They're going to accept that a little bit more. But of course, there are weaknesses to this as well, because.

while children do have spirits and they do have thought lives and consciousness, they are also embodied beings. They also have actual bodies and brains as well. And so it also is ignoring a really important truth that we are not just our minds, that we are also embodied creatures. And so she says in volume two that

while we believed that thought was purely volatile, and that word volatile is the chemistry term that means a substance that is easily evaporated at normal temperatures. So the word volatile means it's liable to change rapidly and unpredictably, especially for the worse. So they thought that thought was like that. It was volatile. It's liable to change rapidly and unpredictably. And therefore, thought...

thoughts or ideas are incapable of impact upon matter or of being acted upon by matter. And so she says, if you think of ideas and thoughts as these volatile things that are just kind of coming and going, they're also powerless things because if we're only our thoughts, if we're only our ideas, then our D our ideas cannot shape and influence us in any way. If our bodies are not real, if they're, if it's, they're only as real as we perceive them.

And so she says, if we don't see thoughts and ideas as powerful, transformative entities in and of themselves, instead of like something we're just coming up with ourselves, our theories of education are necessarily vague. So if naturalism gets us into things like utilitarianism and specialization and things like that, overemphasizing of facts and things like that, I

Idealism brings us into the world of vagueness. It's too vague because we don't see thoughts and ideas as powerful things, as things that can affect matter, because now we're only thinking about that and we're forgetting that we are also embodied creatures. And so this might feel like super unimportant until you think about her whole thing about habits.

And what a habit is, right? And how we form habits. And we're going to get into that in just a second when we talk about this third option. But this is a little bit more of an abstract theory. I mean, already, you're probably thinking as you're listening to all this, this

This is really vague and abstract. Even trying to describe idealism is like this muddy water because everything is in the ideas and in the thoughts and real matter isn't real. You know, that's not what reality is. Reality is only in your perceptions. So can you think, this is a little harder to think of practical examples of idealism

idealism in the way that we educate children. And thinking of the unschooling idea, that's what I kept thinking of as you were talking about very vague ideas coming and going, following an interest one way or the other, and where we struggle with parents who want to let their child follow whatever their interests are, they should have that flexibility. And we're saying, but no, actually, this is the feast of knowledge that they need to prepare them, you know, the

the kind of the foundation, I guess, or the little bits of ideas all over the place that they need to have. And instead, parents are just very vaguely letting their kids educate themselves, kind of. Right. Yeah. Yeah. If this has anything to do with the absolute obsession with fantasy reading. That's interesting. Yeah.

I would just have overfeeding your imagination. Well, that's really interesting that our kids only like the stuff that isn't really real. It used to be that I had a hard time getting kids to read fiction because they only wanted to read facts and truth and all that. Now they have no use for that. They just want to live in this imaginary world all the time. Yeah.

Yeah, I actually think that's pretty pertinent to something that she's going to say later. But I think all of that fits because in one of the research sources I was reading, it said that one of their core beliefs is that our experience of things is about how they appear to us.

which is called your representation of reality, not about how those things are in and of themselves. So the emphasis is not on what is true about that thing, just inherently true about that thing. The emphasis now is how do you perceive that thing? And that becomes what is true, your perception of it, your representation of the thing. Yeah.

becomes the thing. And I think that's where in Charlotte Mason too, we have to have a balance. Especially like in science, you know, where we're observing things that have, there are just some principles, some laws that are just inherently true. And our observations of them are not always accurate. And we are always in pursuit of

of the most accurate representation. You know, I'm not walking away with, well, that's how I see that flower. Well, yes, there are probably things that are just my perception, but there are things that are just fundamentally like, that was actually just an inaccurate observation. That's actually not true of the flower, right? I think what really was driving her to write this particular section was the

And this French educational philosopher, I'm going to butcher his last name, I think it might be Foyer or something like that, Monsieur Foyer, he was writing, he was a contemporary of hers, or maybe a little bit before her, but in the 1800s. And he was calling for, he felt scientific study had become a little too utilitarian. It's all about memorizing all the facts and all this stuff. And he was a lot more on the idealist side. And he was a lot more on the idealist side.

And he was like, science should be literary. And he really wanted to emphasize and humanize science and make it more like science.

a study in literature or something like that. And she was like, we can pull from this. Like he's, he's not wrong there. It has become too much like that, but she felt he had taken it too far. It was too much in this idealism category because at the end of the day, yes, science needs that. And we'll, we'll touch on that a little bit. She has a great way of explaining the approach to science, but we need both, right? We need the, the humanized approach.

side of science, the literary side of science, the beautiful artful part of it. But also, we still do actually need to learn the facts and the figures, you know, the concrete material things of science, too. We can't neglect one for the other. We have to hold both. Right. And so here, idealism is neglecting the concrete elements.

and the material for the ethereal, the experiential. And I think we can kind of go one way or the other. Now, I would be honest, if you think about yourself as a mom, you probably lean one way more than the other. And what you think is more important, the concrete, the material, the moving forward, the sense of having checked off some boxes, having said, yes, we did that, right?

versus the moms that are more like, but it's about experience and it's about ideas and it's about, you know, we all kind of have that leaning inside of us where we kind of go one way or the other. And it can lead to some problems, you know, if it's too much one extreme versus the other extreme. Yeah.

For me, I'm a little bit more naturalist. Yeah, I think I can, depending on the day, go in either direction.

Yeah, I have to force myself towards the natural most of the time. Says the science person. Isn't that interesting? The image that is coming to mind as we discuss these two, if you are maybe more of an idealist, Raphael painted the school of Athens in the center two big

figures right at the middle of the piece are Aristotle and Plato and Aristotle is gesturing towards the ground and Plato is pointing up to the sky. And so if you need a visual representation of this, maybe abstract conversation so far, I'll put a link in the show notes to it. Yeah.

That's great. So good. Yes. That's a great one. Yeah. It's really these two extremes where only the material matters versus only the experiential, our experiences of things. And we, she felt that all the philosophies could be traced back to that. Our practices could be traced back to that. And it could be that the overemphasis of one or the other gets us off kilter in our, in

in education and of course in our living too, of course. But she suggested and offered us to see that there was actually more than just these two options. And we talk about in education as a former licensed teacher, we would talk all the time about the educational pendulum and it's how it's always swinging back and forth between an extreme and extreme. And the veteran teachers at the school would be like, just...

stick around long enough. It'll swing back the other way and we all have to relearn everything again. And they would just be so upset about that. And it's so true. We acted like there were only two choices and we're just going back and forth between the two. And that talk about aimless is the, is,

is the motions of a pendulum. It just goes back and forth. There's never a destination. There's never an aim. We're just going back and forth. And you only feel a sense of exhaustion because the only thing you see in a pendulum is movement. You don't really see a beginning and end, a shape of any kind, a path. It's just back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

And so sometimes I think as moms, when things are going awry, we tend to overcorrect and we swing way too far the other way. And then things go right. We overcorrect and we go too far the other way. I think we do that in doctrine. We do it in our personal living, all the things. And she's kind of offering here, but there's this other way. So she calls it.

In her writing, she uses the phrase media via, which interestingly is a phrase that was actually I was reading the Greek and Roman amphitheaters. There was the causeways that were called the media via and they had these very scenic views. But it comes from a Latin phrase via media, which literally means the middle way or the way they would have thought about it.

In those times, though, it's not just the middle way. We would see it as like, here's two extremes and you're going down the middle. But to the ancient mind, what they thought of it as the way between two extremes, right?

And it comes from the philosophy of Aristotle because he kind of posited that the way you find, he found virtues like justice and courage to actually be the via media or the middle way between extremes on either side. So for instance, to make that a little more practical, courage is the via media between foolhardiness and

and cowardice. So you've got cowardliness on one side, and then you have recklessness on the other side. And Charlotte Mason actually talks about this with courage too, that it's not the same thing as being foolhardy or reckless. And then courage is somewhere in between. And I think it's important to define it that way because we're not saying, and she's not saying that the via media or the media via, however you want to say that, it's not taking two things and combining them.

It is finding the strength that lies somewhere in the middle because either extreme is actually a weakness. We don't want to be foolhardily and we don't want to be a coward. We're not taking the reckless and the cowards and just smashing them together. We're finding a whole new thing that is created in the balance of those two extremes. And that's what she's trying to find is a whole new thing that comes from not going either way because she sees both ways as a weakness here.

So it's not a negative. All of the old virtues were the middle way between two opposite extremes that were both, you know,

falling off the other side of the horse of that virtue you know you can fall off on one way to the extreme you can fall off on the other way and she does a charlotte mason does an excellent job of this in ourselves as she walks through you know all of our character qualities and really how we need to guard each each virtue has its opposing demon as she calls them yeah yes exactly yes and

So sometimes we see like a middle way or finding balance as actually like somehow it's like a moral compromise or, oh, well, you just can't take a clear stance on something. I get that a lot when I'm like, well, I'm trying to find the balance between these ideas and really. Right.

For Aristotle and others who use this term, what they see is that what they have found is not a compromise or a lack of a clear stance. It is a clear stance of its own and its own right, because it's an expression of truth between the weaknesses of extreme positions. So it is taking a stance. It's just taking a stance that.

isn't falling to either extreme, either weakness. Sometimes we pendulum between one weakness to the next and we just fall into a whole nother version. And I think that is why she says that we are in the throes of an educational revolution.

And the word revolution, I mean, you are toppling things over in a revolution. You are not taking existing forms of government and combining them together. You're not doing that. You are coming up with a whole new thing, right? It's a whole new thing. America and our revelation became a whole new country from that, you know? So she felt that she was bringing something along that was an educational opportunity

And that's where she starts to say that we're beginning to recognize that education is the applied science of life and that we really have existing material and the philosophy of the ages and the science of the day to formulate an educational code. So we can draw from the philosophy of the ages. We draw from the science of the day. But what we're coming from is something different.

It's a revolutionary way of educating. And I just think that is it's such an important point that we're not just combining things, but really you're coming. It's a whole new thing. It becomes the stance. It is a clear stance. It's not it's not wishy washy, you know.

Yeah, because she taught her own students that she was in the progressive stream of education, right? Progressive, making something new instead of coming out of the traditionalist stream that was just, you know, building on those ideas that had gone before. But she was creating something new. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

So she then goes on to say, again, she simplifies it for us. Even through all this abstraction, she's basically like, there's really only two educational streams of thought. And except for this third one I'm positing. But also there's really just two functions to education. And this is on page 125 of volume two. She says the functions of education can be roughly defined as twofold. So what are the practical outworkings of this? Is that one,

The first function of education is the formation of habits. And then two, it's the presentation of ideas.

So the first function being habits depends far more largely than we recognize on physiological processes. So you can think naturalism. Habits really do rely on the physiological, neurological processes of the brain and the body. But then the second function of everything. Literally changing the matter. Yes. Literally, which we now know is actually what is exactly happening is those neurological pathways be

being affected, right? And then the second function of education, which is the presentation of ideas, she says, is purely spiritual in origin. So you can think idealism, where it's the spiritual, the immaterial. It's spiritual in origin, method, and result. So the presentation of ideas, the result of that is still spiritual in origin, immaterial in origin.

So she says, is it not possible that here we have the meeting point of the two philosophies which have divided mankind since man began to think about their thoughts and ways? Both are right. Both are necessary. Both have their full activity in the development of a human being at his best. So we need both habit formation and activity.

an awareness of how the brain works and how it can be rewired and reshaped and how our bodies work best. That's why she goes on and on, you guys, about food and clothing and even the temperature and the airiness of your house. It matters. The material matters. But also the presentation of ideas. We need both and human beings need both. But it's not just like we need them both kind of interact like,

going on independently of one another, but that one affects the other. They are intertwined. That the presentation of ideas can help and lead to habit formation, but habit formation can also clear the path for the presentation of living ideas. And so often in homeschooling, we're kind of

neglecting one or the other. It could be that it's the habits are the thing that are being neglected and derailing our school day, or it's the presentation of ideas is what is like, are there any living ideas here and what we're doing? She says that the crux of modern thought as indeed of all profound thought is, is it conceivable that the spiritual should have any manner of impact upon the material?

Every problem from the education of a little child to the doctrine of incarnation turns upon this point.

So it's so important that we accept her premise, which is that the spiritual or ideas can impact the material or our bodies and our brains. We have to see the two can go together. It's not just the ideas or just the body, but that ideas affect the brain. Ideas affect us as people, our actual bodies. And she said, it's so important, even like miracles. If you think about that, if the spiritual,

cannot affect the material, then miracles are not possible because that's what a miracle is, is something spiritual without body affecting what is material. So it's really quite important that we accept this whole premise and her whole philosophy rests on this, that ideas do affect us, ideas shape us, ideas influence us. And so if we aren't accepting that first premise, the other things will not follow, right?

She gives this great example just to make it a little more practical of how these two things go together. She says in volume two, for a habit is set up by following out an initial idea with a long sequence of corresponding acts. So, for instance, you might tell a child that the great duke slept in so narrow a bed that he could not turn over because said he when you want to turn over, it's time to get up.

The boy does not wish to get up in the morning, but he does wish to be like the hero of Waterloo. You stimulate him to act upon this idea day after day for a month or so until the habit is formed. And it is just as easy as not to get up and good time. So here you've got the spiritual thing, this idea of the Duke of Waterloo getting up, you know,

That then inspires the child, it shapes and influences their brain, but it also helps in the formation of this habit, right? So you have the spiritual, the immaterial acting upon the material, which is one of the most powerful things of her method and what sets it apart from other methods. It's not just a curriculum. It's not just the presentation of living ideas. It is how those ideas actually affect our character, our habits, our choices, our

indeed all of living, even the way this little boy gets up in the morning. So it's actually incredibly practical when you bring it all the way down to like earth level, right? And I'm sure we can all think of that book, Atomic Habits. I think of it all the time, the power of a single idea and how much a single choice, a single idea can impact us and change us and change the way our brains even think. It's incredible, right? And she is harnessing that, that way that God has made us into

into all of education, like making it a part of the way we educate students. She says that to educate the child in right habits and the man's life will run in them without the constant wear and tear of the moral effort of decision. So we are working with that brain structure and that ideas really do have that power to affect us.

So it's really quite practical, but it starts with philosophy. Do you think ideas really have that kind of power? And I think some of us, most of us would probably say, well, yeah, of course they do. But then we get into the curriculums that we choose that lack all ideas. Yeah.

Or we don't even think about ideas. And we wonder, where's the life here? Where is the change? Children are simply learning information and that is it. And that's all that education really amounts to. And she had this such a broader view than that, that children would be inspired by these ideas, that the spiritual would meet the material, that the immaterial idea would affect them.

the material of the child, the brain and the body and the habits and all of those things that these, these things come together and it's ideas that we are often neglecting or despising and saying, well, that's all they learned. That's it. That's the only thing they got out of it when it could be a very powerful grain of an idea. Right. I even think about her process of narration and, you know, we're taking in the ideas and,

it is going into our brain. We're thinking about it, but what happens in our, inside our brain as we narrate is we're taking that short term memory and storing it into longterm. It's actually working out that process in our material brain, right. In order to narrate and just how that is a beautiful picture as opposed to, you know, comprehension questions, um,

which is really just treating the brain as knowledge and it really has no impact on your life or, you know, any kind of manner of worksheets or something. It just truly, you see how perfectly that tool of narration fits her method. It is the right tool for her applied philosophy, but it is so much more effective also in developing a person. Yeah. So good. Yeah.

Because as the Bible says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he? Yeah. And so when they've internalized ideas and process them in their mind, they go out and do things with those ideas and it does become a tangible thing. Exactly. We're really getting at the heart of her whole philosophy that ideas are what change us and what we're important. And so then it's,

it affects, if we accept all of this, it affects how we see ourselves, A, as teachers, and then how we see curriculum. So here's the practical part. How does this affect how we view ourselves and how we view curriculum? So if this is true,

That ideas are what are going to change our kids and grow our kids and develop our kids. That means that it's not us doing that. I think we think we have to physically shape our children as ourselves, like as our out of our own efforts, our

our own tireless efforts that we shape and influence them. And really it's going to be the impact of the ideas that they are accepting. That is what's shaping and influencing them and growing them. And so if that is true, then what is also true is what she says in volume two, that parents and teachers are permitted to play only a subordinate part after all. Now that might seem like an insult, like she's saying, get out of the way.

But she is saying get out of the way because we get in the way of the ideas. We become the thing that is the self-changing agent. We're trying to be the agent that will educate our children, change our children, whatever you want to say.

And she says, get out of the way. Let them get to the ideas for themselves because that is the idea that it's going to affect the brain, the body, the character. She says what we say so much, but you may bring your horse to the water, but you can't make him drink. Right. And so likewise, you may present ideas of the fittest to the mind of the child.

So there's your part as the parent is to present the ideas. We are not to neglect that. However, we do not know in the least which you will take and which you will reject. And that is where we are limited. We can't force them to take certain ideas or sadly reject them.

And I know there are sometimes things that our kids may accept that kills us, right? But their acceptance and rejection of ideas, that's an act of the will. That's one of the functions of the will is to accept or reject an idea. We have to let their wills do it. It can't be through the force of our own will that they encounter ideas. We can't accept or reject it for them. And this is the hardest thing, at least for me. And maybe it's just because I'm a bit of a control freak. Um,

I wish I could. If I could literally make my kids open their mouth, drink the water of the lesson plan I've prepared and then make them swallow and digest it like I would actually do it. But we can't.

But sometimes, man, we really try, don't we? And we do way too much to get them to understand, to get the main idea, to take away certain things. And we overdo. And we become the agent of education instead of the ideas. And so we have to be limited. We are subordinate to the ideas themselves, except for through the fact that we are the ones who do present those ideas. So

If we aren't to get in the way, our role then becomes making sure that they are constantly what she says is replenished with fit and inspiring ideas. So our job is just to serve the food, but we can't get them to chew it and swallow it and digest it and all that kind of stuff. But it is our job to serve it and to make sure that they're getting all the things that they need to be properly nourished.

So we are not leaving things off the table. This is where specialization is a danger. It's like giving your kids, you know how they're talking about this epidemic recently of hidden hunger among children.

where they're only eating chicken nuggets all the time, or they're only craving sugary foods because this has affected their brain chemistry and they only crave it. They don't realize they're actually starving to death because they feel like they're getting fed and they like the food they're getting, but it's actually not nourishing food. And I think we have a real epidemic of educational hidden hunger.

Because kids can really love worksheets. They can really love things that are checked off, complete. And they're like, I learned that. I'm fine. I liked it. When really, are they really though being nourished and developed and grown and stretched in the way that they really need? And we as parents are the ones who have to look at the table with our more mature lived experience to say chicken nuggets is

is not an acceptable dinner by itself all the time, every single day. Exactly.

because I'm your parent, I realize you need more than that. But we have to apply that same principle to their education. Just because your kid is asking for a worksheet or a book doesn't mean that is what is best for them all the time, every single lesson, you know, where we have to step in the parent and say, is this nourishing? But on the other side, we have to stop the flow of food when they are full and

And she said, this is really important, especially with Bible to when you see the look in their eyes that they've had enough, they are at their like full limit to stop because you don't want them to dread the dish. Right. And it's especially true with Bible lessons. So we have to have that another, here's another balance of not under feeding them, but not overfeeding them either. Not going too far in the presentation of ideas where it's too much for them. It's beyond what they can digest. Right.

So that is where this via Medea guides us in our role as a teacher, where we are presenting ideas and,

We are giving balanced ideas, nourishing ideas, but we're not getting in the way of the ideas. And then of course, if we realize that our main role as a parent is to present ideas, then my goodness, we are going to get a whole lot more picky and particular about the ideas we are presenting our children. If we realize that really is our major primary role as the educator, she's actually even says that it will make us the more anxiously careful,

as to the nature of the ideas we set before our children. And I was just thinking how we are so anxiously careful about so many things as moms, like the car seat we buy,

The shoes they wear. I will stay up late at night anxiously wondering, are they going to get into college? Or I remember my kid was struggling to write their name and that kept me up at night one night. We're so anxiously careful about the food they eat or the brands we buy, the safety. How often though are we anxiously careful about the ideas we're setting before them and really, really thinking about that?

She says, if we get to that point, though, where we are looking at the nature of the ideas, then we will not be content that they just learn geography, history, or Latin. But we'll go further than that. We'll say this, what salient ideas are presented in each study? And then how will these ideas affect the intellectual and moral development of the child?

So instead of just seeing they need to learn geography, they need to learn history, they need to learn Latin, we go further than that. We go deeper than that. We look at what are the salient ideas presented in each of these studies? And then how are those ideas going to affect my child, not just intellectually, but also in their moral development?

So we need to be looking at the things that we're presenting our children and how they're being presented. We're examining those. First, the most important question is, are there salient ideas? I was just going to say, this whole conversation really speaks to the perennial question of why is Twaddle bad or what is she talking about? I mean, when she says the best books are not too good for them.

Yeah, or textbooks. But yeah, I still see so many. Well, at least they're reading something and they enjoy this book, but it clearly is just dribble and doesn't have any inspiring ideas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's one of the first things you ever told me, Emily, I was asking you about some reader in your library, still trying to figure all this out. And I was like, is this twaddle? And you said, well, and you just smiled and looked at me and I still remember it. And you were like, well, does it have any ideas in it? I was like, well, not really. She goes, well, I think you figured it out. Yeah.

Like that is a really great like measure just right there. Like, are there any ideas in this? But it's also like the, in the book itself, you know, but it's also knowing as a parent, the, the, the subject as in general, what are the salient ideas that geography teaches or science teaches or literature teaches? What are those big ideas that that particular subject addresses? And,

And that's what makes it important to study. It's not the things that you're going to learn as you're studying geography. It's those salient ideas that those other things are getting you towards. Right. And I love how she points us to that. Right. And everything that she talks about when it comes to a subject, she's going to give you the salient ideas of the subject first and then the practical, you know, like the how to.

So this is so helpful in guiding us, I think, in avoiding these extremes is what are the ideas each subject should be bringing us to, these salient ideas? And if you're not sure, her volumes have a lot of descriptions and a lot of great ideas on that. And then you can ask yourself, how will these ideas affect the intellectual and moral development of the

the child. She says, these are not just subjects of mere utility, which means usefulness. So we're not just looking at how useful are they, but how are they going to affect their intellectual and moral development? And she says, there's moral and social science conveyed by means of history, literature, or otherwise. And it's the one subject, which we are not at liberty to leave out from the curriculum of a being breathing thoughtful breath. So this is really, really important to consider this part of education.

this moral and social considerations of what these subjects are teaching. And so here's a great example that she gives from science, because again, she's talking about Monsieur Fouillet and his idea that science should be just literary, just that. And she says, with science, two things are necessary. First, we must introduce into the study of each science, the philosophic spirit and method.

general views, the search for the most general principles and conclusions. We must then reduce the different sciences to unity by a sound training in philosophy, which will be as obligatory to students in science as to students in literature.

Scientific truths, said Descartes, are battles won. So if you describe to the young the principle and most heroic of these battles, you will thus interest them in the results of science and you will develop in them a scientific spirit by means of the enthusiasm for the conquest of truth. You will make them see the power of the reasoning which has led to discoveries in the past and will do so again in the future. How interesting arithmetic and geometry might be

If we gave a short history of their principal theorems, if the child were mentally present at the labors of a Pythagoras, a Plato, a Euclid, or in modern times of Vieta, Descartes, Pascal, or Leibniz, great theories, instead of being lifeless and anonymous abstractions, would

would become human living truths, each with its own history, like a statue by Michelangelo or like a painting by Raphael. And I thought, here is what she's trying to say. We're blending, we're bringing it all together, that we're giving some of the history, the people of math. And I don't know about you guys. I didn't know any of those people. I couldn't tell you anything about the people of math. The people who discovered the principles were only taught the,

the principles, the formulas, the laws of science or of math, but you don't hear the story behind it, the conquest, the person that was there. And those are the spiritual immaterial ideas

that seem like they're not utilitarian, that they're not useful. Why does it matter who Pythagoras was? And even just learning how to pronounce Vieta's name. I had to read about his story. Absolutely fascinating. He is responsible for variables in algebra to use letters to represent unknown quantities. And I just found myself suddenly very appreciative for variables. I used to hate them, but to realize how very, very smart that was and how helpful that was.

to know his story a little bit, to know what led him to that discovery, that mathematical development. Suddenly now the idea has sparked interest in my brain. And we know that we're going to store information far more easily

clearly and far more into the future if it has interested us, if it has inspired us. So we want to have ideas in science. We want to have ideas in math. We want to hear about the people, who they were as humans to humanize it.

But then also, we need to study the results of science, and we need to study the results of math, and we need to learn the things too. It can't be just that. It also has to be the scientific study, the nature study. We have to eventually do Euclid's study, actual geometry and algebra and things like that. We need to bring the two together. But one inspires the other and makes it memorable and helps the student to care about it, which she says, of course, is what

is what we're going for, right? So it really is super practical to understand these philosophies and how we can kind of go one way

or the other, too utilitarian or way too experiential. And really we want that, the inspiration of ideas to meet the material things that we are studying, the concrete things that we do need to study. They need the inspiration of ideas to come with it. And that's what we are trying to bring together in this via media, this middle way that she is kind of, her whole method is offering to us. Wow, Jessica, fantastic.

That was fantastic wrap up. I've read that portion of volume two many times, and that was very helpful. I was just thinking of the time you read string, straight edge and shadow. That's exactly what I was thinking. I actually read the story of geometry as an adult, like maybe 25, six, seven years old. And for the first time understand understood why we call it a square number. I mean, I could do it. I just had no, there was no connection with actually even the picture of

of what people were doing, let alone the story behind how people use that and why. And then another thing I was thinking of, I've seen people throw shade on your biology choice for middle school, which you still actually, if you haven't done it by high school, you recommend it being an introduction. And it is the stories of these scientists who discovered these things

very fundamental biological ideas. And yes, they go on to do other biology afterwards, but this is foundational and people throwing out because it's not real science. And here I'm going, oh, you're just being a naturalist and you really need some of this. Yes.

idealism thrown in there and blended together to give the idea. Plus it kind of reminds me of, you know, Charlotte Mason's ideas that they have to think they have to form opinions. And when we do have it grounded in the people who came up with some of these things, it's,

we also can learn that sometimes those people were wrong or sometimes they were right, but they weren't believed for many years and things like that help us to be more discerning people now as we read news or read things. So this is, this is like what you're saying. This is the end goal is chaos.

character and these virtues in our kids. It's not just again, knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It is so that they can live this full life that she wants for them.

Yes. Well, thank you so much for sharing that with everybody. And I hope this becomes an episode that people refer back to again and again as they're trying to sort this out. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot to mull on, but it's like eating a good steak. You just got to keep chewing on it. And probably really keep going back to it our whole lives because like you said, which way do we lean? And the reality is

all of our lives. We've got to keep pushing towards this middle place just as our own persons. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Jessica. Oh yeah. Thank you so much for creating space for such an abstraction of a topic. Would you like to go deeper in your knowledge of the Charlotte Mason method? A delectable education has resources available for your continuing education and growth as a Charlotte Mason teacher.

We have a variety of full-length video workshops as well as video demonstration lessons featuring real families using the Charlotte Mason Method that you can watch at your convenience. Visit www.adelectableeducation.com and click on the Teacher Training Videos under the Teacher Tools tab. Thank you for joining us today on the podcast. We hope our discussion serves to equip and encourage you as we seek to explain the Charlotte Mason Method. ♪

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