Charlotte Mason wrote 20 principles of education. When I was just getting started with homeschooling after meeting Charlotte Mason during my search for the homeschooling provider that fits our profile. I kept on reading those 20 principles and even up to now, I still read through them and use it as my guide in our homeschooling journey.
I've talked about quite a few of her principles. I often mention about children being born persons, and that they are neither good nor bad but has the potential to be great or evil. I make sure that I observe the principle of obedience and authority especially when we are forming good habits at home. The last part I read in Towards a Philosophy of Education was about the 4th philosoply and I talked about it in one of my blogs.
Today, I'd like to talk about the 5th principle. Well, part of it anywy. The 5th principle states:
Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments--the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life."
I used to think that when teaching kids, a teacher needs to prepare a whole lot of things to make sure that the ambience of the schoolroom will inspire the children to learn. And so before I met Charlotte Mason, I printed out lots of stuff and stuck it on the walls of our house. Everywhere you look, you'll see pictures, letters, visual aids and so much more. Our house looked more like a kindergarten school room than a home.
But it turns out, I did not really need all of those. In CM's principles of education, she meant a different thing with the term "an atmosphere of environment." She did not mean that we should child-proof our house, or make it into a colorful rainbow and cloud filled room, or create a room that is specifically meant for studying.
There is nothing wrong about that though. If you have the space, the energy, and the time to create all of those decorations and designs, go for it. But all those are not a necessity. Our house right now does not have an extra room to function as a study room. We do our homeschooling wherever we feel like it. Sometimes we study in the living room, sometimes we use our kitchen table, we study in the terrace, or even in the park (during our nature studies.)
I used to think that our home needs to have that school ambience. But the atmosphere that Ms. Mason was talking about here is what the youngsters call the vibe. It's the energy emanating from you that your child catches naturally.
There is no need to rearrange everything in the house to have that school vibe. There is also no need to make everything so perfect, there is no need to hide the imperfections just so you can have the atmosphere of environment. Education needs to be as natural as it can be. No need to create these artificial environments where there's a display of this and that in the house hoping it would make the home feel like school.
We don't need to bring the school home when we homeschool. That is a common mistake that we do. I did that when I was just starting off. Instead, we use all the natural things that happen inside the house as an opportunity to provide education to our learners. It is much easier to learn about the caterpillar's metamorphosis when you see it in person as opposed to just reading about it in a textbook and memorizing the terminologies about each stages.
Now I understand that when CM said that there are only 3 tools that I need in homeschooling my daughter. Education is an atmosphere. My child is looking at the vibe that I as her primary educator is giving off. This is one of the reasons why I do my CM study in the morning before we start her study time. It is so much easier to have a child's full attention and focus on her studies when she feels in her heart that her learning is done in a natural way. No artificial setups, no eye catching decorations and visual aids, no restrictive and closed door school setup. She understands that learning can be done anywhere, anytime, and that she can learn from anything in a natural environment.
