Studying History Using the Ideas of Charlotte Mason

 History should be the study of the good and the bad whereby the child forms in himself principles in which he judges "the behavior of nations, and will rule his own conduct as one of a nation."  The study should not be so full of dates for

"how is he to put the right events in the right reign, when, to him, one king differs from another only in number, one period from another only in date?" Vol.1 pg. 280 

Charlotte Mason thought it would be much better to let a child spend much time learning about one man than it would be to cover the whole history of a particular country.  Here in her own words, she says…

"The fatal mistake is in the notion that he must learn ‘outlines,’ or a baby edition of the whole history of England, or of Rome, just as he must cover the geography of all the world. Let him, on the contrary, linger pleasantly over the history of a single man, a short period, until he thinks the thoughts of that man, is at home in the ways of that period. Though he is reading and thinking of the lifetime of a single man, he is really getting intimately acquainted with the history of a whole nation for a whole age. Let him spend a year of happy intimacy with Alfred, ‘the truth-teller,’ with the Conqueror, with Richard and Saladin, or with Henry V.––Shakespeare’s Henry V.––and his victorious army. Let him know the great people and the common people, the ways of the court and of the crowd. Let him know what other nations were doing while we at home were doing thus and thus. If he come to think that the people of another age were truer, larger-hearted, simpler-minded than ourselves, that the people of some other land were, at one time, at any rate, better than we, why, so much the better for him." Vol 1 pg 281

I read in either Vol. 1 or Vol. 6 where Miss Mason said studying history chronologically was good.

Before I found Ambleside Online my 3 older boys and I used Greenleaf Guide to OT History, Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.  They learned a tremendous amount.  We did projects and read all kinds of books about the time period we were studying. 

Looking back, I think it was a good choice because I was learning along with them.  I was better able to see just what they were learning and was able to bring something up to talk about at the dinner table or bring back to their memory something we had read about.  My memory is so bad that now it’s the other way around.  They’ll talk about something and I’ll be wondering where they learned it.

I don’t believe CM thought you necessarily had to start at the very beginning of the world in order to study history, just not to be jumping to all different time periods in a mixed-up fashion.

Literature was to be books about the time period studied.  Plays, novels, essays, poems, architecture and painting were all to be used when possible.

CM gave her very young students, ages 7-9, fairy tales to read for literature.  I differ here with Miss Mason.  Some of those tales are really not worth reading in my opinion nor are very uplifting.  (Hansel and Gretel comes to mind.)

If you’ve read much about CM you know that Narration was one of her basic teachings.  What your child can tell back he knows.  If he cannot tell you back he probably needs to learn the habit of attention.  Narration can be done orally by the younger children, a written narration (essay) by the older children or even another way is for the child to draw a picture.

Get excited about history and pass that on to your children.  From CM Vol. 6 page 170, Miss Mason writes about people who have no interest in history.

What is it to them where great events have happened, great persons lived and moved? And, alas, this indifference to history is not confined to the Dominions; young people at home are equally indifferent, nor have their elders such stores of interest and information as should quicken children with the knowledge that always and everywhere there have been great parts to play and almost always great men to play those parts: that any day it may come to anyone to do some service of historical moment to the country. It is not too much to say that a rational well-considered patriotism depends on a pretty copious reading of history, and with this rational patriotism we desire our young people shall be informed rather than with the jingoism of the emotional patriot.

"Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it." (Edmund Burke 1729-1797)