At Sunnyside

What is the purpose of education?

"Thought breeds thought;
children familiar
with great thoughts
take as naturally to thinking
for themselves
as the well-nourished
body takes to growing;
and we must bear
in mind that growth=
physical, intellectual,
moral, spiritual-
is the sole end
of education."

Charlotte Mason

]Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) Two Sisters on a Terrace 1881

"Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."
Charlotte Mason

Frederick Cayley Robinson, The Three Brothers, c.1897

“Classical education
is the cultivation of
wisdom and virtue
by nourishing the soul
on truth,
goodness,
and beauty
by means of the
seven liberal arts
and the four sciences."

Andrew Kern

"We are what we repeatedly do.  
Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."
Aristotle

Girl with a Basket of Fish (1889) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

"“The task before us in setting in
order the house of our national education is a delicate one. We must guard those assets of character which the education of the past affords us, and recover, if we may, the passionate love of knowledge for its own sake which brought about an earlier Renaissance”

    ~  Charlotte Mason      
   (Formation of Character, pp. 381-382).


“The question is not—how much does the youth know when he has finished his education--but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?”
  
~  Charlotte Mason       
 (School Education, pp. 170-171)


"Let it be our negative purpose to discourage in every way we can the educational faddist, that is, the person who accepts a one-sided notion in place of a universal idea as his educational guide.  Our positive purpose is to present, in season and out of season, one such universal idea; that is, that education is the science of relations."

Charlotte Mason
(School Education, p. 161)

Girl with a Basket of Oranges (1889) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

"What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down.
In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange,
that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach
to other people what we do not know ourselves."
 ~ G. K. Chesterton.

Giotto, Saint Francis Feeding the Birds

from Plutarch's Moralia

​​"So that we might acquire
a habit of mind
that is deeply trained
and philosophic,
rather than the sophistic 
   that merely acquires information, 
     let us believe
that right listening is 
 the beginning 
of right living."

from Plutarch's Moralia 1 P259.

"People who believe
they are
ignorant of nothing
have neither looked for,
nor stumbled upon,
the boundary between
what is known
and unknown
in the universe."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson,
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Reverie, Johann Heinrich Vogeler

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”
 – Plutarch

Of What Purpose Are Books ?

"Children should have the joy
of living in far lands, in other persons, in other times-a delightful double existence;
and this joy they will find... in their story books.
Their lessons, too, history and geography, should cultivate their conceptive powers.
If the children do not live
in the times of his history lesson,
be not at home in the climate his geography book describes...
these lessons will fail of their purpose."

Charlotte Mason

In the Library, Auguste Toulmouche

“If we are to read and grow thereby,
we must read *to know*,
that is, our reading must be study --
orderly, definite, purposeful” 
 
 Charlotte Mason  (Formation of Character, p. 382)

The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels (detail of Jesus and book), Quentin Massys, c. 1495.

"We ought to reverence books;
to look on them
as useful and mighty things.--
If they are good and true,
whether they are about religion, politics, farming, trade,
law, or medicine,
they are the message of Christ,
the maker of all things--
the teacher of all truth."
~ Charles Kingsley 

"Every age has its own outlook.
It is specially good at seeing certain truths
and specially liable to make certain mistakes.
We all, therefore, need the books that will
correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.
And that means the old books."

C.S. Lewis

A Book

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
Emily Dickinson

Fragonard, A Reading Lesson

"There is no past so long as books shall live."
Bulwer-Lytton

William McGregor Paxton (1892-1941), The Blue Book,

please excuse my mess......just playing a little while

Portrait of Two Women, Diego Rivera

Auguste de Chatillon, Léopoldine au livre d’heures

Women Reading, Edmond Francois Aman Jean

A Young Girl Reading, Maren Sofie Olsen, Michael-Peter Ancher

1881 Hans Olaf Heyerdahl (Swedish 1857-1913) ~ At the Window

Interior with a Mother Reading aloud to her Daughter, Carl Holsøe

Young Girl Reading (1886) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Ozias Leduc – The Young Student

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot - Virgil’s Muse

Marie Spartali Stillman. (1844-1927)

Young woman reading before a window, Unknown Artist, French School

Quiet Hour, 1911 - Ivan G. Olinsky (1878–1962)

Portrait of a Young Edwardian Lady Reading, Sarah Birch

The Library Elizabeth Shippen Green. 1905

At a Reading Desk, Sir Frederick Lord Leighton

Woman Reading (1894) by Henri Matisse.

The Travelling Companions - Augustus Leopold Egg 1862

Her Favorite Pastime, George Dunlop Leslie

Leisure Hours, Philip Hermogenes Calderon

Interior with a Mother Reading aloud to her Daughter, Carl Holsøe

In the Library, Auguste Toulmouche

The Reader, Fragonard

Lovely Young Lady Sketched the Landscape , Josef Scheurenberg

Ida and Ethel, Twin daughters of J. Searlight, James Sant

Violet Oakley (1874-1961) ~ There is no Frigate like a Book ~ c1900

"Give children a wide range of subjects, with the end in view of establishing in each case some one or more of the relations I have indicated. Let them learn from first-hand sources of information--really good books, the best going, on the subject they are engaged upon. Let them get at the books themselves . . ."
​
Charlotte Mason, Volume 3, p. 162

Joaquín Sorolla, On the Sands at Zarauz Beach (1910), oil on canvas. Via WikiPaintings.

A man should
hear a little music,
read a little poetry,
and see a fine picture
every day of his life,
in order that worldly cares
may not obliterate the sense
of the beautiful
which God has implanted
in the human soul.  


Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Lady Shannon and Kitty on the Dunes by James Jabusa Shannon, 1900-1910

Finally, brethren,
​whatever things are true, whatever things are noble,
whatever things are just, whatever things are pure,
whatever things are lovely, ​whatever things are of good report,
if there is any virtue and
if there is anything praiseworthy--
meditate on these things.

Philippians 4:8 
New King James Version