It’s been a while since I’ve done a CM (Charlotte Mason) quote of the day post. I shared many quotes from School Education and Ourselves several years ago, but I seem to have only posted the occasional quote from An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education. Now that I’m doing a reread of it, this time the lovely new Centenary Expanded Edition from Smidgen Press, I thought I would try to post a quote or two a week to get me back to blogging a bit more often. 😉
These two quotes come from the Introduction and Ch 3 (The Good and Evil Nature of a Child), and I think they complement each other well. The first one gives a brief apology for a liberal education, not one focused on “STEM” or the “3 Rs” or even on the child’s own interests.
As a matter of fact, it is the man who has read and thought on many subjects who is, with the necessary training, the most capable whether in handling tools, drawing plans, or keeping books. The more of a person we succeed in making a child, the better will he both fulfil his own life and serve society.
But any possible benefits to society of a liberal education always come second to the benefits to the child himself:
We must have some measure of a child’s requirements not based upon his uses to society, nor upon the standard of the world he lives in, but upon his own capacity and needs.
