The ABC's of a Charlotte Mason Education

T is for Timetables

Mar 30, 2025

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grayscale photography of clock — Photo by noor Younis on Unsplash

“A change is as good as a rest.”

Charlotte Mason

This is good advice. It harnesses a truth about our biological and spiritual make-up that nourishes life, and a nourished life is fruitful. C.S. Lewis speaks of this truth when Screwtape explains to his nephew about what he calls The Law of Undulation. From his wicked perspective he calls man an amphibious creature: half spirit, half animal, and says:

“As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they in habit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy therefore in undulation.”

His conversation on undulation is fascinating on many levels. For our purposes here let’s note that this changeableness is part of the goodness of our makeup. It’s not a flaw. And further in the reading Lewis hints that God even seeks to satisfy this craving in us with good things like the cycles of nature, the seasons of life, and patterns of work and rest. The converse would seem to be true – that if not satiated this aspect of our existence becomes a vulnerability.

The thing I have always observed with good philosophers is that their statements seem so obvious. And while it must be that the truth had been present since it originated from the source of all truth, and likely acted upon and lived within, or not, as consequence would dictate. It took one person to articulate it, to lay it all out there, to state what had been present all along, to put it into words. I imagine the response of their contemporaries might have been similar to my initial impulses… “Well yeah?” And yet that statement, that clarification, that acknowledgement was needed. Needed to be lain down as a foundation, as a given, so that others could approach the bulk of its definiteness and use it and build upon it.

This is what Charlotte Mason did with her use of what is called The Timetables. She took universal truths and applied them to education. And not just the ethereal and lofty goals of education, but the practical, mechanics-of-everyday, tangible parts. When shall we sit and when shall we rise? When shall our powers of reason and logic be most called upon, and when might our hands or bodies be prioritized? The fact that a quiet reading should be punctuated by a spot of change in order to be most effective was set as a cornerstone.

It is the toss and the pull of a rope; the rise and fall of a wave on the shore; the work and rest of the seasons. The changeableness craved and so intrinsically part of how we are created is harnessed by The Timetables and, not only used to best advantage – but becomes the life sustaining marrow at the core of our days.

This idea of a give and a take, an ebb and a flow, a starting and a turning, of work and rest, of a week and its sabbath, of seasons, and shifts, all runs so contrary to modern ideas of work and cram and progress that it can feel foreign. Like not enough. We say that Charlotte Mason’s education is relational – which is another way of saying it is human. It recognizes and grows and protects and produces in and for all that we are. In saying that, “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man”, Jesus makes his captain point by alluding to an undercurrent of understanding. The rest – the parameters - were not made to cram men into, but rather given as a gift to use, his blessing to live well within.

It is in the details of Miss Mason’s method, things like The Timetables, that the big differences are felt over the course of a year. The Timetables can be most simply summed up in two reminders:

There are set time limits for lessons that are dependent on the age of the child. These limits are to be strictly observed. They will feel limiting the first couple of passes through and then freeing as you see the scope.
1. Short lessons because: one only has so much attention for a given thing, and when that attention is gone the extra time spent is wasted and, ironically, used to train the habit of inattention and dawdling. Work within the parameters of real life.
2. Short lessons because: when we pay absolute attention, much is accomplished. We have forgotten the truth and power of this in our perpetually distracted modern lives.
3. Short lessons because: absolute attention is fatiguing and unsustainable.
4. Short lessons because: We are training the habit of being fully present, whatever the task. “Even games want all of a person.” There is a time and a place for everything, and the writer of Ecclesiastes would approve of this core understanding silently holding sway.
Rotating subjects based on what part of the mind or body is being worked. Never cluster readings into a pile, or all of the disciplinary subjects into a morning, don’t save all opportunities for movement for afternoons. Rather, pepper the day with small changes and shifts. This is where you will begin to appreciate the short bits like: artist study, folk songs, drill, dance, or scenes to illustrate. They are valuable in and of themselves, but they also help with the arc of a day, the vitality of a day.
1. Rotating subjects to use different parts of ourselves: First one, then another. Never two of a kind in sequence. Never the numbing drudge of monotony.
2. Rotating subjects to use different parts of ourselves: because much ground is covered in this way. Breaks are not needed since… a change is as good as a break.
3. Rotating subjects to use different parts of ourselves: because there is much ground to cover. Short lessons, simultaneously rotating and resting the various faculties, allow for broadness and a diversity of subjects to be included in a week’s study.

Like a new dance these steps take attention and focus in the beginning. But like a good dance – the rhythm and patterns will refresh and begin to feel like joy.

Sara Timothy 2025

Author’s Note:

The original timetables that Miss Mason used are available to us. Several people have done the work of modifying them for modern times (things like no school on Saturday!), some of those are linked below.

In all cases, do remember Jesus’s words: “The sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath”. To me this means that we are free to follow principles, the heart of the timetables as distilled above. For example: If a timetable has slots for 2-3 languages and you want to pursue one or two, use that space for something else. My recommendation would be to fill it – don’t just delete it. We are after broadness after all! If you feel like your high schooler needs an extra 15 minutes for math – figure it in during your planning, but then hold to it. The day needs constants and rhythms to work well, and no subject is so important as to have permission to nose out others.

My final suggestion is to sit and look long and hard at what Miss Mason actually did before taking liberty in changing it. Maybe even give it a feel for a term. In my experience, there are often connections and unseen reasons for many of the things she implemented. Keep in mind this is a method that was developed over years and years, with many different students and teachers, and in different settings, always being adjusted as it went. What we have been handed is not only a carefully thought-out philosophy – but a worked-out method.