TIP #10: Children are born persons - Beginner Guide to Charlotte Mason

When a child is first born, they already are a person with their own unique talents, abilities and personality. They are not a blank slate that will eventually develop into a person. Children should be cherished and valued for the person that they are and allowed to develop to their full potential. For this reason, we should not underestimate a child or lower our expectations of them.

Charlotte Mason explained that although a child is born a person, they don't know much about the world yet, and so need to learn about the world. They also don't yet know how to control themselves or how to direct or realise their potential. And this is the aim of their education.

We insult children when we give them boring or dumbed down lessons, and then expect them to enjoy it. Children love to learn, but they are perfectly capable of learning on their own. Our job as parents are to provide the wide, generous feast and allow the child to partake of it and make the connections themselves.

I will end off our 10 weeks of tips with the following quotation from Charlotte Mason:

If we have not proved that a child is born a person with a mind as complete and as beautiful as his beautiful little body, we can at least show that he always has all the mind he requires for his occasions; that is, that his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind. – Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), page 36