Readings in a Charlotte Mason education

There are many books by or about Charlotte Mason and her philosophy of education.

Which one you prefer may have less to do with the information in the book than with the presentation style of the author and the personality of the reader. Here's my take on these books:

The very best book to read on the CM approach (IMO) is her own. I especially recommend volume 6, Toward a Philosophy of Education. This is the last book she wrote and we have several decades of experience between volume 1 and volume 6. It's a great summing up of her ideas. It's free online, at AO's website. You can print out just a few pages at a time, giving you the chance to read, highlight, take notes, and cross stuff out when it irks you.=) You can copy it as a document and email it to your Kindle account. You can buy it alone sometimes, and you can buy the whole 6 volume set.

I love Catherine Levison's books, both A Charlotte Mason Education and More Charlotte Mason Education. I bought her back issues of Charlotte Mason Communique, and I read them diligently and reread them. They are practical, full of 'how-to' information, not so much 'why.'

Personally, I was never able to finish A Charlotte Mason Companion, by Karen Andreola, but I do not think this is because that book was inferior. It was simple a matter of style and personality- her style isn't a good fit for my personality.

I like practical, down to earth, straightforward, cut to the chase, plain, unadorned, just the facts ma'am approaches. I'm a practical, cut to the chase, 'is that logical' sort of person. That's the way Levison writes- lots of practical, useful ideas, little wrapping, and none of it fluffy.

Many of my dearest friends preferred Karen Andreola's, which is 'softer,' more touchy/feely, a more emotion based appeal, lots of wrapping. It's warm and fuzzy. I think without exception everyone of my dear friends who prefer Andreola to Levison are my more touchy/feely friends. It comes across as treacly to me. Treacle for those who do not know, is basically thick, sticky, warm molasses. Many people like it, and I am not saying there's anything wrong with it. It's just not to my taste.

Treacle can also mean overly sweet. I do not mean that Andreola's book is not good. I just mean that for someone of my taste and disposition it is not as appealing as Catherine Levison's style.

I like my coffee heavily sweetened with flavored creamer. The HM likes his black. Neither one is right or wrong, it's just a matter of taste.

I like my books less sweet. The same style may come across to one person as warm, friendly, engaging, sweet, and very personally friendly, yet will come across to another (me, for example) as fluffy, soft, mushy and not meaty enough.

It's a matter of taste and style preferences. I have to add all these disclaimers because people who prefer treacle scare me. I offend them all too easily and without intention.



Penny Gardner's CM Study Guide takes all CM topics by chapter, with a nice selection of quotes and then some discussion questions. I read through this one with my husband, as it seemed the best choice for a jumpstart understanding of CM for somebody (like my husband) who doesn't have time to do a lot of reading.

When Children Love To Learn - A Practical Application of CM's Philosophy for Today. General Editor Elaine Cooper. It is a good how to do CM book and tells the why do CM also.

For The Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer MacAulay is the first CM book I read, back in the late 1980s when we began homeschooling. It is an excellent introduction, and a very good book not just for homeschooling, but for parenting. I love this one. If you can read only two, I would suggest this one and CM's own volume 6.


Laying Down the Rails from Simply Charlotte Mason is supposed to be everything Miss Mason said about habit training in one volume. I actually have it as an etext (I won it in a blog contest), but I forgot about it until now, and I haven't read it yet.

Some people really like the Clarkson's Wholehearted Child book. I have some reservations about this one,  and it's really not a CM book.

There's nothing wrong with not using CM in your homeschool, by the way. But I do have an allergic reaction to a number of books and businesses out there that *market* themselves as 'CM' when they really are not. I once had the dubious privilege of attending a CM study group led by the person in that area everybody told me was the acknowledged 'expert' on CM. I was a newbie to the CM approach, and I had read two of the six volumes. She laughingly told me she'd never finished a single one of them.
Nothing wrong with that, either- unless, like her, you're writing a book on the CM method. Then it's kind of like writing a book on the Constitution without ever having read it. Her book has since been published, btw, and it is not on this list.=)