In my last post, I talked about the ways in which my daughters made connections, through living books and hands-on activities, that helped them to learn (and retain what they’d learned) about various historical periods, specifically, late 19th and early 20th century history.
Charlotte Mason, in her Original Homeschooling Series, spoke of these connections when she called education the “science of relations.” Miss Mason believed that children have a natural thirst for knowledge and a great capacity for amassing it. She believed that their quest to understand and absorb the world around them could be channeled quite productively into learning, both formal and informal. By keying into a variety of relationships, a child can absorb and retain much more than if his day is broken down into meaningless and unrelated “subjects.”
Andrea gave excellent examples of such relationships in this post, when she described how her children’s history class studies are related to the arts, and how she builds on that with her choices for literature and science. The more our kids’ learning is interconnected, the more likely it is to stick. I strive for the same thing, and this year’s example is our WWII study. The literature we’re reading dovetails with our geography exploration (Europe and Japan) and with our artist studies of Edward Hopper and Allen Say.
When kids are faced with a string of unrelated subjects that have no relationship to one another or to them, their attention will quickly fade. But, when we can demonstrate connections and relationships that are meaningful to our children, they will learn, retain knowledge, and be eager to learn more. My kids spent their first year of homeschooling relating everything to Laura Ingalls (“Now, that happened after Laura lived, right? Where on the timeline would that go?”) and, because they loved Laura, everything they learned that was in any way connected to her had more meaning and more staying power.
“The science of relations” is “a science” that packs a powerful educational punch.