Charlotte Mason Method

The Charlotte Mason Method is an educational approach developed by British educator Charlotte Mason in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, formalized in lectures she delivered at Bishop Otter Teacher Training College between 1874 and 1878 and published as Home Education in 1886. It rests on the belief that children are born persons who should be respected rather than treated as blank slates to be filled, and that education is the science of relations between a child and the wide world of ideas, people and things. The method favors a broad, liberal curriculum built on living books, well written works that engage a child's imagination, over dry textbooks and rote drills, paired with narration, nature study and habit formation aimed at spiritual and moral growth alongside academic learning. The approach became especially influential in Christian education and the homeschooling movement, where it continues to shape curricula today.