Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast. I'm Sonia Schaefer. Our topic for today starts with this word,

therefore. And whenever you come upon that word, you know you're jumping into the middle of a thought or a conversation.

And it's important to know what came before it. As a former pastor of mine used to say,

whenever you see therefore, check to see what it's there for. So let's do that. Let's back up a couple of episodes in this core values series

and remind ourselves of the ideas that we have been unpacking. There are two guides to moral and intellectual self-management to offer

to children, which we may call the way of the will and the way of the reason. A Philosophy

of Education introductory page 31. Do you recall all that we talked about regarding self-direction

and the will and the reason?

If you haven't listened to those episodes, I encourage you to do so because they formed

the basis for what we are going to talk about today.

Charlotte said, in light of what we have learned about the importance of self-direction and understanding how the

will works and when you can rely on reason or when that's a bad idea, in light of all that,

therefore, children should be taught as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief

responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas."

Philosophy of Education introductory page 31.

That's it. That's your child's chief responsibility as a person.

That's your chief responsibility as a person. Accept or reject ideas. From the cradle to the grave,

suggestions crowd upon us. And such suggestions become part of our education,

because we must choose between them. A Philosophy of Education, page 129. Now we've talked about

choosing between ideas, and perhaps it still sounds a bit nebulous to you. I don't see any ideas

crowding upon me, lining up at the gate to my heart and my mind. So it might seem a bit

abstract to wrap your head around. But Charlotte made this idea very practical when she explained that the things around us represent

...