We have never been so rich in books. But there has never been a generation when there is so much twaddle in print for children.
Interpretation
Although we have access to many books, much of what is published for children lacks quality and substance.
Charlotte Mason highlights a paradox in modern publishing: despite an abundance of literature available to children, much of it is superficial or lacking in value. She emphasizes the importance of quality over quantity, advocating for a discerning approach to the materials provided to young readers.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about children's literature at a library event.
Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.
As for literature β to introduce children to literature is to install them in a very rich and glorious kingdom, to bring a continual holiday to their doors, to lay before them a feast exquisitely served. But they must learn to know literature by being familiar with it from the very first. A child's intercourse must always be with good books, the best that we can find.
In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a motherβs first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.
The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.
Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Donβt ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.
We talk of lost ideals, but perhaps they are not lost, only changed; when our ideal for ourselves and for our children becomes limited to prosperity and comfort, we get these, very likely, for ourselves and for them, but we get no more.
Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information
Teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation
My message to students is that if you want to become an entrepreneur and save the world, definitely don't skip college. But go to a school that you can afford. You'll be freed from the chains of debt and succeed on your own ambition and merit.
I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing.
It's extraordinary to think that if you walked into a room and said you had never heard of Hamlet, you would be regarded as a Philistine. But you could walk into the same room and say, 'I don't know what a proton is,' and people would just laugh and say, 'Why should you know?'
Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.
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