Bible Lessons, Charlotte Mason Style {Part 1}

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat do you do for Bible? is a common question I am asked. People are usually looking for a curriculum, something they can buy that will direct them. Does Charlotte Mason offer something like this?

The answer is no.

And also yes.

For it seems there is no box curriculum for anything Charlotte did, and yet she does offer us direction and practical ideas.

I own a number of children’s Bible story books that I use with my preschoolers. Our favorites are The Big Picture Story Bible and The Jesus Storybook Bible. Charlotte would have preferred fine art illustrations, I know, but I appreciate the simple poetry and covenantal approach.

But eventually a child turns six, and it’s time for the Real Thing. What does that look like?

First of all, for Charlotte Mason, there was no substitute for reading the actual words of Scripture. She did utilize commentaries for background information, but her students weren’t reading “Bible storybooks” in her classrooms:

[P]erhaps we canot do a greater indignity to children than to substitute our own or some other benevolent person’s rendering for the fine English, poetic diction and lucid statement of the Bible.

Her objective was nothing less than giving the children a knowledge of God, and she knew that this knowledge was best obtained through the use of the inspired text itself.

So, let’s try and break down exactly what she did.

The Old Testament

Charlotte really respected the power and importance of the Old Testament’s place in our faith. She understood that in order to really “get” the New Testament, we need to have the Old Testament playing on repeat in the background of our minds. Because of this, the New Testament and the Old Testament were approached differently.

We’ll get into the details, but it seems important to note at the outset that the philosophy behind Bible lessons was like that underlying everything else: if it’s worth reading, it is worth narrating. So Scripture was read, passage by passage, and narrated each time. If we want them to remember and assimilate what we are giving them, we must have them narrate.

Ages Six to Twelve

At this age, children read the Old Testament narratives, chronologically, passage by passage, narrating after each passage. Beginning in Kings, from what I can tell, the Psalms and Prophets were fit in chronologically as well. Mason used a commentary at this age called The Bible for the Young, and I thought I found it on Google Books, though I must say the title was a bit different, and so I wasn’t positive.

Personally, I have not used commentaries in our daily readings, though it would be helpful to me to find something that shows me the exact chronology, especially how the various Prophets fit in with Kings. That is a resource I will not need for another year or so, as we are currently in Judges. I wouldn’t mind using a commentary; it simply wasn’t something I thought about before researching this post.

Does the teacher do anything? Good question.

Before the close of the lesson, the teacher brings out such new thoughts of God or new points of behaviour as the reading has afforded, emphasising the moral or religious lesson to be learnt rather by a reverent and sympathetic manner than by any attempt at personal application.

We draw their minds to the principle, but we let conviction settle upon them as it will.

Ages Twelve to Fifteen

In junior high and early high school {as we call these ages}, they read the whole of the Old Testament again, this time on their own, as arranged in another volume I cannot locate called Old Testament History by Reverend H. Costley-White. From what I can tell, part of the appeal was that Costley-White had made the “necessary ommissions” which made the readings all appropriate for mixed company. Again, I wonder if there is anything like this out there? Or is that really necessary for a home school?  Also, all of the readings were interspersed chronologically, so the Psalms and Prophets were already where they belonged, historically speaking. I believe there are chronologically arranged Bibles available, and perhaps it would be helpful for me to invest in one.

Ages Fifteen to Eighteen

In high school {what she called the “upper forms”}, students worked their way through the Old Testament a third time, this time utilizing Dummelow’s One Volume Commentary. More modern versions of this can be found used on Amazon, though I didn’t link because I couldn’t find the 1908 original, and I can’t vouch for the content of the printings from more modern decades. Again, I think that a suitable commentary could be found. {I might even be tempted to use Matthew Henry!}

A Summary of Old Testament Lessons

In Mason’s classrooms, then, the Old Testament was read:

• Three times through {by the end of the student’s schooling}
• In light of a simple, age-appropriate commentary that provided helpful background information
• Passage-by-passage and narrated accordingly
• Chronologically, with the Psalms and Prophets interspersed into the books of Kings
• In the actual English translation, rather than using a “children’s version”

Here … unfolds for us a principle of education which those who desire their children to possess the passive as well as the active principle of religion would do well to consider; for it is probably true that the teaching of the New Testament, not duly grounded upon or accompanied by that of the Old, fails to result in such thought of God, wide, all-embracing, all-permeating, as David, for example, gives constant expression to in the Psalms. Let us have faith and courage to give children such a full and gradual picture of Old Testament history that they unconsciously perceive for themselves a panoramic view of the history of mankind typified by that of the Jewish nation as it is unfolded in the Bible.

Click here to read Part 2.