The Modern Education System vs. Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy

At conferences, after I have spoken about the Charlotte Mason philosophy, people say to me, “I am convinced that this is a brilliant methodology. It makes so much sense. It resonates with my heart and with who I am. This is what I want for my family, for my children.” They are convinced. But something holds them back from fully embracing Charlotte Mason’s methodology. Even with all the educational research I cite. Why? Because it's so different from the education they received in the public school.

The fact is, in order to truly and fully embrace the Charlotte Mason model, we must deprogram and rewire our brain, change our belief system, and replace the lies we have swallowed about what education is.

This wasn’t hard for me to do when I started homeschooling. That’s because, although I went to an elite university (UT-Austin) and received a master's degree, I knew that I left high school with very little knowledge. I was convinced that the education I got was inadequate. When I started teaching my children, I found out how little I actually knew. By the time my kids were in fifth grade, I was certain they knew more than I knew when I left high school. It didn’t take much to convince me that our educational system was broken.

To help you rethink education, it’s vital to unpack what the modern education system is, how it developed, and what it was designed to do. Once you understand these things, I think it'll be easier for you to embrace the Charlotte Mason method and release the tyrannical hold the system has on you.

When we think of brainwashing, we think of a religious cult and a system of duties that one must perform to be in good standing. For some reason, we fail to correlate our unquestioning acceptance of the modern educational system with institutionalized mind control. And though our country’s test scores on the world’s stage are evidence that our system doesn’t work, we still want to teach our children using it. We implement the same scope and sequence, the same deconstruction of each subject to be parsed out in small bits over the course of twelve years.

We teach the same subjects in the same ways but believe that because our children are home with us, we’ll be able to do it better. We, without logic or reasoning (hence brainwashing), believe that, if implemented correctly and well, using the current system could result in a good education or even a great education for our children. If we do it perfectly, the way it's designed, then we will impart a superior education.

The fact is, the current system—created in the early 1900’s—was never designed to impart a true education to the common child. The system was designed from start to finish to create obedient, mindless workers who follow directions, never ask questions, and perform for a boss. The author of the system, John D. Rockefeller, actually said, “I do not want a nation of thinkers, but a nation of workers.”

Before this system was implemented, the United States was a nation with a 93% literacy rate. Even the “uneducated” common man could enjoy literature. Because of Benjamin Franklin’s creation of a lending library, everyone had access to and interest in knowledge.

So what happened? In short, the Industrial Revolution. With that came the need for human bodies—workers.  Governments and industrialists in America had a problem: The American spirit. The American Dream. The innate desire for men to captain their own ship. To be entrepreneurs. To become the next rags to riches story in our unique American quilt.

This mentality had to be squelched. You see, workers cannot be independent thinkers. Workers cannot be knowledgeable and learned. Workers must be willing and obedient, in desperate need of their jobs, in perilous fear of being fired. Otherwise, the turnover would be insurmountable, and the workers would not submit to the harsh conditions of the manufacturing.

Whether it be railroads, trains, cotton mills, or cars, the men in charge needed human bodies. They needed people who were willing to live a life of drudgery in a factory—to be unquestionably obedient to the authorities.

They asked one another, “How do we create a society of these kinds of people? How do we eliminate a society’s originality and uniqueness?” 

This leads us back to John D. Rockefeller, a self-made billionaire who didn’t like the idea of anyone else reaching his lofty status. His biggest problem was American individualism and private education, especially home education. It was difficult to get factory workers among people who were self-educating and were forging their own path or building their own wealth. Those who were following in their family’s footsteps and believed America was, indeed, the land of freedom and opportunity.

This whole "all men are created equal" thing just wasn't working for Mr. Rockefeller, so he set about to change the future of American education. He hired men to do research.  He gathered advisors around him, like Horace Mann and Frederick Taylor Gates. These men had some excellent ideas for fixing John D. Rockefeller's problem, and they fleshed out a dream. They dreamed that they could fix this problem with compulsory education. In fact, Gates wrote a tract which you can still find online today. It's called “The Country School of To-morrow,” and here's a quote from that tract.

"In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions feed from our minds and unhampered by tradition we work our own goodwill upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, or statesmen of whom we now have ample supply."

Basically, these schools were not designed to educate. They were designed to school. The word “school” means an organization that provides instruction, or a group of persons of similar opinions or behavior.

Where did this dream come from? None other than Prussia (modern day Germany). Horace Mann traveled throughout Europe examining school models. He found the Prussian system superior in creating the kind of obedient nation of workers that John D. Rockefeller wanted.

The Prussian system was developed after Prussia had lost a war to Napoleon. The Germans realized that the reason they had lost to Napoleon was because their soldiers were thinking for themselves rather than following orders to the letter without question. To correct this for future wars, they instituted a system of schooling that required a young child to go through eight years of rigorous training that taught reading, writing and arithmetic, but most importantly, focused on duty, unquestioned respect for authority, and the ability to follow instructions and orders to completion. The system taught children what to think and what not to think, what to believe and what not to believe. It formed in them unquestioned loyalty to the King, to the authority, leaving no room for individuality in preparation for military work or work in the bureaucracy.

Critical thinking was not only not allowed but punished. 

When presented with this beautiful dream for creating a nation of mindless, obedient workers, many other billionaires jumped on the band wagon. They pitched in their billions to develop this compulsory school model.

One billionaire, Andrew Carnegie, realized that the key to success for this operation would be to alter the teaching of American history. As it was currently taught, American history highlighted individualism and self-government; personal accountability and the equality of man; the ability for men to choose his destiny; the ability of man to rise from the ashes and be whatever God put in his or her heart to become. Most importantly it highlighted that no king, no authority, was above any other and that all had equal ability to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

The billionaires needed history textbooks that downplayed the role of the individual and highlighted dependence on government. They went to the most prominent teachers of American history during that time, like Charles and Mary Beard and many others. They asked them to alter the way history was being taught to young people in primary schools and in college. These historians said “no.”

So what did the billionaires do? In the 1920’s, they first created the American Historical Society. Then, they hired 20 doctoral students in American history and gave them huge grants to rewrite the history books for students.

As you can see, our education system was never formed for the good of the people. It was formed for the good of the government and the ruling class.

Essentially, the education system that is still in effect today was designed to do the opposite of educating our children. It was never designed to give our children a rich and living, genuine education. That would be counterproductive to the corporations, to the ruling class, to the government.

Johann Fitch, one of the top developers of this Prussian system of education, wrote, "The schools must fashion the person and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will."

Yes. Our modern model of education is actually designed to remove free will and autonomy. And of course, we know this is true because children are not allowed to study what they want to study. They have to follow the order of sequence given to them. That holy grail of state standards that somebody arbitrarily made up.

Johann Fitch also says, "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled, they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished."

Do you see how the system is actually designed to brainwash children? Whatever they want children to believe, that's what children come out of school believing.

Fitch also says, "When this technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need for armies and policemen."

As you may remember from your school days, the model is designed to reward the most obedient, those who did not question or buck the system. Original thinkers, questioners, doubters—they are systematically punished.

Like little robots, people left the system to work for the government or to work for corporations. And the best, most obedient performers became upper management. Everyone else ended up somewhere lower on the rung.

The least obedient of these students were often the smartest people—but were made to believe they were the dumbest. People like Albert Einstein got kicked out of school for questioning the teacher. Some of the greatest men, the greatest minds in history, were boys and girls who did not perform well in school: Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens. These people could not shape themselves into the mold.

While developing her model of education through evidence-based research, Charlotte Mason was well aware of what was happening. She saw the systems of schooling that were being implemented to create workers. She saw the deconstruction of education from something that originally developed a child's natural genius to something that actually punished uniqueness and rewarded compliance and sameness.

And guess what? It worked. And it was true what Johann Fitch said. It only took a generation.

Today, we have hordes of evidence that this system doesn't work to educate children. That the scope and sequence—the standards of what children need to memorize every single year and regurgitate on a test—are arbitrary and unimportant when it comes to a true education.

In fact, the National Center on Education and Economy says we now have the worst educated workforce in the world. The fact that American schools consistently score at the bottom on one of the biggest cross-national tests (the Program for International Student Assessment, the PISA test) that measures 15-year-olds in developed nations, should tell us something.

The countries that score at the top do not use this Prussian education model. They use research-based models that work and that, unsurprisingly, follow Charlotte Mason's methodology, whether they know it or not.

So even if we perfectly implement the public school system of education in our home, our children will not receive the kind of education that truly educates. The word “educate” comes from the word to draw out. To draw out from the child.

Education is not putting information in; it's drawing genius out.

It's drawing from the child the ability to think and reason and question and develop ideas—just as the Charlotte Mason model teaches.

One study found that American schoolchildren, by the age of seven, are completely unmotivated when it comes to learning. Not only that, but they have also lost that natural, innate curiosity. Charlotte Mason calls that the divine curiosity. Do you wonder why the age of seven is such a significant age? Isn’t it interesting that, by that time, children have been in school for one or two years. It only took two years for the school system to suppress and all but extinguish their natural curiosity.

We know children are naturally curious. It's innate within them. They come into this world hungering for knowledge. They want to learn. They come into this world asking questions because they want to know.

Albert Einstein says, "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

And Charlotte Mason says, "The divine curiosity, which should have been an equipment for life, hardly survives early school days."

The reason that our divine curiosity should have been equipment for life is because it is the driving force for us to search out education that is unique to the passions and interests that God has placed within us. Yet, it barely survives early school days as Charlotte Mason says. And not only that, but children who go through this system of education lose their natural creative genius.

I believe God has given every single child their own individual genius, and it is our job to educate, to draw out, that genius from within our child. The Charlotte Mason model actually enables us, empowers us to give our children the kind of education that does draw out from them that natural creative genius.

In fact, NASA funded a study on 2,400 children, testing the subjects at the age of four or five and then consistently every few years after that. At the age of four and five, 98% of these children scored at a level that was considered creative genius. They followed these children all the way through their education and watched that number drop significantly. They eventually discovered that by the age of 24, only 2% of the population can be considered creative geniuses.

They concluded that the education system is designed to hinder and extinguish creativity and creative genius. And of course, we know that's exactly what it was designed to do.

Even though it’s how we’ve done things for 100 years in this country, it is time to deprogram our belief in the system. The fact is: it doesn't work. And it was never meant to work.

So if you are struggling to embrace the Charlotte Mason model and it feels unnatural to you, consider that perhaps it's because you were fed a lie about what constitutes an education. And you believed it. You might just need to unlearn, de-program and de-school yourself to set yourself free from the lie.

As homeschoolers, we have an opportunity to toss out the system that doesn't work and employ methodologies that do. We can give our children the education that will unleash their potential. 

I just want to encourage you with this today. I hope that it releases you to fully embrace the Charlotte Mason model, which truly does work. I've seen it with my children. I've seen it with hundreds of other children. And I believe that you will find it to be the biggest, most important decision that you make in your homeschool journey.

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