Information Is Not Education

In her third volume, School Education, Charlotte Mason says, "It cannot be too often said that information is not education."^1^ This conviction rests on her clear distinction between acquiring information and assimilating knowledge. She explains:

"The distinction between knowledge and information is, I think, fundamental. Information is the record of facts, experiences, appearances, etc., whether in books or in the verbal memory of the individual; knowledge, it seems to me, implies the result of the voluntary and delightful action of the mind upon the material presented to it."^2^

Simply put, information consists of facts, whereas knowledge makes a lasting impression on the mind.

The Feast Analogy

Charlotte Mason often used the analogy of a feast to describe the process of educating children. Feeding children disconnected facts and tidbits of information offers little "nutritional" value for their growing minds. In fact, she famously states that "mere information is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body."

When, however, we spread a rich feast of knowledge filled with living ideas, children's minds are nourished and able to grow into all God created them to be.

She elaborates:

"Only those ideas which have fed his life are taken into the child's being; all the rest is cast away or is, like sawdust in the system, an impediment and an injury. Education is a life. That life is sustained on ideas. Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another, whether by word of mouth, written page, Scripture word, musical symphony; but we must sustain a child's inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with food."^3^

The Problem with Cramming

Charlotte Mason cautioned parents and educators against reducing education to the accumulation of information. She further observed that the way we measure learning often encourages the very fact-regurgitation she warned against. When education is evaluated primarily by how much information students can recall, their "aim becomes a pass, not knowledge."

"They cram to pass and not to know; they do pass and they don't know… and most of us who know the 'candidate' will admit that there is some truth in the epigram. There are, doubtless, people who pass and who also know; but even so, it is open to question whether passing is the most direct, simple, natural and efficacious way of securing knowledge."^4^

Living Ideas vs. Memorized Facts

This is one area where Charlotte Mason's philosophy diverges from the neo-classical model—particularly the grammar stage, which emphasizes memorization of facts to create "pegs" for later learning. Mason believed the opposite approach to be more effective. She wrote:

"All the thought we offer to our children shall be living thought; no mere dry summaries of facts will do; given the vitalising idea, children will readily hang the mere facts upon the idea as upon a peg capable of sustaining all that it is needful to retain."^5^

In other words, living ideas provide the structure upon which meaningful facts naturally attach, not the other way around.

The Proper Role of Memorization

Of course, memorization "has its subsidiary use in education, no doubt, but it must not be put in the place of the prime agent, which is attention."^6^ We ask children to memorize math facts, for example, yet memorization itself is not the ultimate aim. Rather, the goal is to cultivate attentive minds that grasp the living ideas behind what is learned.

Children remember what is meaningful because it resonates with their personhood.

Charlotte Mason also distinguished memorization from recitation. Recitation focuses on reading aloud with attention to fluency, pronunciation, pacing, tone, and emotion. When recitation material contains living ideas, meaningful memorization follows naturally. She explains:

"The learning by heart of Bible passages should begin while the children are quite young… It is a delightful thing to have the memory stored with beautiful, comforting, and inspiring passages… but the learning of the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, should not be laid on the children as a burden."^7^

Narration and True Memory

This stands in contrast to utilitarian memorization:

"In order to memorise, we repeat over and over a passage or a series of points or names… we do memorise a string of facts or words, and the new possession serves its purpose for a time, but it is not assimilated; its purpose being served, we know it no more."^8^

Information memorized without living context is quickly forgotten. Knowledge that is assimilated becomes part of the person.

We can conclude with Charlotte Mason's own words from A Philosophy of Education, where she explains how narration cultivates meaningful memory—not by forcing memorization, but by engaging the mind fully:

"To read a passage with full attention and to tell it afterwards has a curiously different effect… Trusting to mind memory we visualise the scene, are convinced by the arguments, take pleasure in the turn of the sentences and frame our own upon them… that particular passage has been received into us and become a part of us… several months hence, perhaps, we shall be able to narrate the passage… with all the vividness, detail, and accuracy of the first telling."^9^

Sources

Charlotte Mason, School Education, p. 170
Charlotte Mason, School Education, p. 225
Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 109
Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, p. 217
Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, p. 278
Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 17
Charlotte Mason, Home Education, p. 253
Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 20
Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 174