Homeschooling: No Teaching Degree Necessary

The season two opener of the Thinking Love podcast circles back around to the first Charlotte Mason quote that we used in our very first episode: “The mother is qualified.” 

Homeschool moms often receive this question like nails on a chalkboard; How are you qualified to homeschool if you don’t have a teaching degree? 

“‘The mother is qualified,’ says Pestalozzi, ‘and qualified by the creator herself to become the principle agent in the development of her child, What is commanded of her is a thinking love.”

Home Education

But Charlotte Mason says that we ARE qualified. Even if a university hasn’t qualified us, God has. 

Having a teaching degree is not necessary for homeschooling. Even though we both have backgrounds in teaching, neither of us feel that it has been helpful to homeschooling. 

So what does our role as a home educator require of us?  From this passage of Home Education, (pages 2-3) we see that the mother should: 

• We must treat this as seriously as a job- diligence, regularity, punctuality 
• We must understand what we are about- What is our purpose in home educating? 
• We must be prepared 
• We must have somewhat of an understanding of educational philosophy
• Have some understanding of child development

Show notes

Home Education (available to read online from Ambleside Online) 

The original quote appears in Pestalozzi’s Letters on Early Education. You can download it for free through Google Books. An excellent summary of Pestalozzi’s life and work can be found in Essays on Educational Reformers by Robert Quick. This is also available online for free. 

What If Everybody Understood Child Development? by Rae Pica. 

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