I believe Charlotte Mason would have approved of children being native readers, and that she would have approved of Timothy Kailing’s Native Reading method. I think parents who ask “What should I do with my preschooler?”, referring to the apparent lack of structure in the CM method for young children, should at least be aware of the idea of native reading.
Charlotte Mason believed children (especially young children) should be outside as much as possible, and not forced to sit through long lessons. But in her own description of a child learning to read, she points out that he already has a lot of the building blocks of reading, before that magic sixth birthday that makes him “CM school age” (as I have heard it referred to on the internet!). How did he know without being taught?
He was read to and he played with letters that were present in his natural environment. The knowledge and familiarity he has make it much easier for him to learn to read when the time comes. The native reading method takes this a bit further.
When you read, you remember text pointing, running your finger under the words as you pronounce them. This draws the child’s attention to the fact that the written words correspond to the spoken words. I think Charlotte Mason would approve of this because there is no forcing or lesson involved. You are demonstrating the correlation to them, in the same way as her reading lesson. Even though the child is probably younger than six, you are simply letting this correlation exist in their environment and not trying to “make” them read. He will start paying attention and make the connection himself when he is ready. Is this so different from simply reading aloud? The only difference is that you make it easier for him to make this connection. Something like a Book of Centuries also makes it easier for children to grasp the concept being “taught”. A major caveat here is that the native reading method of text pointing is very fluid and unobtrusive, and takes some practice. Making it super-obvious and heavily pointing out each word as you read will not work, and Charlotte wouldn’t approve of it either. I think she would call that too much teaching, too early, and taking the enjoyment out of books!
The letter play and word building parts of a native reading environment take the alphabet knowledge of Charlotte’s example child a bit further. Her example child knew the letters on sight, because he had played with letter forms. I assume that if he knows their names and sounds, someone was playing with him and naming them. When you create a native reading environment, you are also playing with your child as they explore the letters you provide. I described several letter and word-building games in my post on Native Reading. The part that takes it further than Charlotte Mason’s example is word building. She does this with an older child as an explicit part of the reading lesson. With native reading, you do this with younger children as a game. I don’t think Charlotte would have objected to that since it is supposed to be a game, and you’re not supposed to force a child to play it (awfully similar to stopping a lesson if a child loses focus!).
Lastly, I think Charlotte Mason would have approved, on principle, of children being native readers. Native readers are not explicitly taught, so the idea doesn’t conflict with her position against forcing small children to do lessons too soon. Native readers intuitively grasp what they are reading, without having to “translate” as they read, which I believe she would have appreciated since so much of her curriculum was based on reading. If your living book is enhanced by natively understanding the written word as easily as you do the spoken word, your mind could be busier making connections and absorbing the literature. I think Charlotte would have found it wonderful that a child could be a “native reader”.
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