Our Philosophy
Rooted in Scripture. Cultivated in wonder.
Living Heritage follows the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education — nothing at all like the standardized education most of us experienced.
Welcome
The True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
Welcome to Living Heritage. We would love for you to join us on this journey of discipleship in the things of God — the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
Living Heritage follows the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education, which is rooted in Scripture. It's nothing at all like the traditional standardized education that many of us experienced. Therefore, this philosophy is a learning curve for many of us, and we need to re-train our brains into this new (old) way of looking at education.
When you purchase our curriculum, you'll receive a Getting Started Guide to help you think through some of these issues. This is meant to arm you with knowledge and give you confidence to move forward and trust the method behind what may seem like madness at first. I promise that it will bear fruit if you give it time to take root and mature.
We must keep clearing away the weeds of what we think is “normal,” but what was only normalized in the 1860s through the 1930s. Even our great-grandparents wouldn't recognize the type of standardized, age-segregated, textbook education that has existed only in the last 150 years or so. Let us plant a biblical education instead — rooted in Truth, cultivated in Wonder, and growing in the Wisdom that our children need to become men and women who live for Christ.
Method
The Charlotte Mason method.
Charlotte Mason (1842–1923) was a Christian educational philosopher in England at the turn of the 20th century. She began a parent's educational union, a teacher's college, an educational journal, a curriculum, and six books expounding her philosophy.
Mason believed that behind every educational methodology is a philosophy of education, and behind every philosophy is a theology — of the nature of the student, the role of the teacher, and the goals of education. Styles of education don't exist in a vacuum; we cannot pick and choose based on preference like an ice cream flavor.
At Living Heritage, we chose a methodology and philosophy of education based on our theology — and based on our theology we rejected certain philosophies as well. We purposefully avoided education that treats the child like a data machine or a disembodied brain and that places students into artificial stages or categorizes children through Darwinian developmental psychology. Charlotte Mason looked to the Scriptures first and foremost when developing her philosophy. She explicitly rejected any divide between sacred and secular knowledge. All true knowledge belongs to God.
Mason believed two foundational things: children are born persons — image bearers with minds and hearts that need real nourishment — and education is the science of relations. Knowledge is not mere information; true knowledge is relational. Education must get at the heart — the seat of the mind, will, and affections — not just the mind.
Read more about the Charlotte Mason philosophy and method of education.
Two burdens lifted
The teacher lays the feast. The books and the child do the rest.
In a Charlotte Mason education, the parent is freed from two burdens.
First, the parent is freed from the burden of providing the knowledge of and the love for each subject. That burden falls on the books — each one carefully chosen to communicate interest and excitement in the subject area, written by an expert in the field who writes in beautiful prose.
Second, the parent is freed from the burden of forcing the child to know. That burden falls to the child himself. No child will ever know what he is not willing to own for himself. Biblically, knowledge is a love-relationship word. We can encourage children to love the right things by exposing them to the true, the good, and the beautiful. We can model that love. But ultimately it is impossible to make anyone truly know or love anything.
Thus a broad and generous feast is laid for the child across many subject areas, presented in an enticing, appetizing manner. The child takes what he needs as he grows and matures.
Children are born persons. Education is the science of relations.
— Charlotte Mason
Books
An education based on books — not textbooks.
How do we, as adults, learn new things? We generally learn through reading good books. We don't go to the education section of the library and check out a textbook written by a committee with chunks of information in dry paragraphs and bold terms. Rather, we find a well-written book about the subject we desire to know more about, and we read it. This is how we grow throughout our adult lives. God intends for us to be readers. As Christians, we are people who deal in words — God's Word being our primary Book.
The Charlotte Mason philosophy has students read living books: books written by one person (not a committee) who has a deep interest in and knowledge of their subject and communicates that through beautiful prose. A living book ignites the imagination, inspires interest, invites imitation of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, and embeds nourishing ideas that cause both young and old to grow as persons made in the image of God.
Furthermore, students read many books at the same time, slowly, so that the student has time to meditate on the content and to make connections between books. There aren't any workbooks. You simply read and tell back. It's a very simple method. Fifth graders and up do most of their readings independently and come to you to tell back what they read.
This isn't information accumulation — that's not consistent with a Christian goal of education. We are forming hearts and ordering affections so that students can walk in wisdom and love learning about the things God has made. Satan knows all the right information. That's not enough; or rather, that's not the right thing. The problem is that he doesn't love God. That's what we're after.
Narration & language arts
No workbooks. Narration instead — and it grows into writing.
In a Charlotte Mason education there are no workbooks. Instead, children narrate — they tell back, in their own words, what they have just read. Narration is the natural way we all learn: the same way you might tell a friend about a book you loved or a film you just watched. The child does the real work of sorting, connecting, and remembering, which cements it in memory and builds a genuine relationship with the subject — rather than skimming a text for answers to fill in a worksheet, where the worksheet’s author did most of the thinking.
Because the child is doing the thinking, narration is also the foundation of strong writing. Oral narration in the early years grows naturally into written narration, and written narration grows naturally into composition. By the time a student is writing essays and research papers, the habit of gathering his thoughts and telling them back clearly is already well formed — so formal writing has something living to build on instead of starting from scratch.
Literature
Literature is an art — not an analysis tool.
In Living Heritage, we use living books beautifully written by experts who communicate a contagious love for their subjects. But how do we approach literature itself?
Like Charlotte Mason, we expose our students to the best that has been written throughout time. Their diet is books that have stood the test of time and come out on top as enduring and beloved classics. Students read poetry, Shakespeare, classic folk tales, fables, legends, epics, classic novels, and short stories.
Literature is an art — we study it as such. We do not read literature as a history lesson, a theology lesson, a character lesson, a grammar lesson, or any other kind of lesson. We do not use literature to diagnose worldviews, critical theories, ethnic prejudices, feminist studies, or studies in sexuality. Literature is not a lens through which to diagnose. We don't use literature. Period. We can certainly look at the time period and culture in which it was created and the life of the author, but ultimately we look at the words, which provide the shape of the art form. Words have meaning.
Literature is also not a lesson in mirrors and windows. We do not choose literature based on the ethnicity or gender of the author or characters. That is racist. We reject the notion that students need mirrors and windows to love themselves or love others. We are all of one race — the human race — and we have the God-given ability to love others because they are fellow image bearers. Literature, instead of pointing us to ourselves, should point us to Christ, giving us eyes to see the Creator, the Redeemer, the fallen human condition and the overarching story of redemption.
From the podcast
Why Read Shakespeare, Myths, and Magic?
History
History as a pageant — not a list of facts.
History in a Charlotte Mason education is not taught as a chronological list of facts. Charlotte Mason eschewed “all compendiums, outlines, and abstracts” of history.
Instead: “Let him 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.”
Children learn ideas first, not facts first. We fill their minds with the great stories that spark their imaginations; later those stories serve as pegs on which to hang names and dates that students naturally encounter in their progressively more difficult readings.
This fits with the way we study Scripture. We don't teach our youngest children to memorize a list of dates and people and only later give them the Bible stories. We never study a verse in a vacuum but always within its proper context.
Science
Science as natural philosophy.
In a Charlotte Mason education, science is natural philosophy — what it was called before the modern secular-scientific era. One thinks about scientific things within the context of philosophy and theology. Science relies on observation of the natural world rather than mere laboratory experiments — though we also do labs. Science is learning to observe God's world and growing in curiosity about how it works.
In Living Heritage, we put the Bible first, and all science must measure itself against the Bible, not vice versa. We are unapologetic young earth creationists.
Whenever possible, we choose living books written by Christians. However, we will not choose a less-than-living book simply because it claims to be Christian and young-earth. Unfortunately, Christians have not written living books on all subjects. When this is the case, we look at the overall character of the book, the marvel at God's creation it presents (even if the author does not acknowledge God), and the literary quality of the writing — rather than giving lip-service to creationism in an otherwise mediocre book.
We will never choose any book that uses evolution as a premise or that belittles creationism. Some books may contain passing mentions of evolution (“millions of years ago”) — when this happens, we mark it in our plans and use it as an opportunity for students to refute the statement biblically with a narration prompt. All of our science plans, including our five exclusive high-school science options, are grounded in literal six 24-hour-day creationism.
If this resonates
Welcome to Living Heritage.
Read more in our Commitments & Distinctives, or jump straight to the plans.