In the Charlotte Mason method, whole books and first-hand sources are used whenever possible, rather than textbooks. Textbooks tend to be crammed with facts and information, at the expense of human emotion. This is deadening to the imagination of the child. Children, she thought, should read the best books, not graded readers or textbook comprehension paragraphs. Educators think they are doing children a favor by taking scissors to cut out pages of the best books.
Children deserve to have more than just a nodding acquaintance with the best authors.
A child gains knowledge through his own work digging out facts and information. Miss Mason said that asking children to narrate back what they have learned is the best way to acquire knowledge from books. Because narration takes the place of questionnaires and multiple choice tests, it enables the child to bring all the faculties of mind into play. The child learns to call on the vocabulary and descriptive power of good writers as he tells his own version of the story. If you follow her method there is no need for homework in the elementary years because the child immediately deals with the literature and proves his mastery by narrating what he just learned back to you.