I ordered TruthQuest American History for Young Students 1 yesterday. I hope it gets here soon as I have been really wanting to get my hands on it. I have been drawn to it for some time now. For whatever reason I want to dive into America History next year.
The other night I began writing out our schedule for next year using Ambleside Online’s (AO)Year 1 & 2 and Linda Fay’s (HUFI) Year 1 & 2. But with my desire for American History it just wasn’t meshing together quite right. AO doesn’t even really cover American History yet and some of the books I like in HUFI Year 2 don’t really go with the topics of Year 1. And since I don’t want to start American History in the middle (Year 2), I think I will have to pull my own history and literature together. But that’s okay … I like planning 
It’s funny, I was reading some of Charlotte Mason’s writing yesterday about Systems & Methods of education (Home Education, Some Preliminary Considerations). She said the following:
Method a Way to an End.––Method implies two things––a way to an end, and a step by step progress in that way. Further, the following of a method implies an idea, a mental image, of the end of object to be arrived at. What do you propose that education shall effect in and for your child?
A System easier than a Method.––A ’system of education’ is an alluring fancy; more so, on some counts, than a method, because it is pledged to more definite calculable results. By means of a system certain developments may be brought about through the observance of given rules.
System––the observing of rules until the habit of doing certain things, of behaving in certain ways, is confirmed, and, therefore, the art is acquired––is so successful in achieving precise results, that it is no wonder there should be endless attempts to straiten the whole field of education to the limits of a system.
If a human being were a machine, education could do no more for him than to set him in action in prescribed ways, and the work of the educator would be simply to adopt a good working system or set of systems.
But the educator has to deal with a self-acting, self-developing being, and his business is to guide, and assist in, the production of the latent good in that being, the dissipation of the latent evil, the preparation of the child to take his place in the world at his best, with every capacity for good that is in him developed into a power.
Though system is a highly useful as an instrument of education, a ’system of education’ is mischievous, as producing only mechanical action instead of the vital growth and movement of a living being.
I realized that I was looking at AO schedules and HUFI schedules as systems and trying to implement them as such. But they are just helps that some precious ladies have made to assist us to see the big picture, put it all together and navigate the CM method.
Freedom … that’s what a method allows. And that’s what I desire in our homeschool. That’s one of the reasons that I like the CM method so much. But I do need to get it into my head – METHOD, not system. What do I propose that education shall effect in and for my child? That’s the question and the answer to that question will lead my planning. I like freedom …
… every time he calls me and asks, “What are you doing?” my response is, “Planning.”
