Charlotte Mason commented that she had few living science books written in English to choose from. (vol. 6, p. 275) I sometimes reflect on this as I agonize over which book to use for a subject. We have so many to choose from! But recently, I wondered if Mason would approve of using some of the books I like because of their age. Would she say a science book over 50 years old is too old?

I have some good reasons to use books from the early half of the twentieth century. For instance, the quality of books for young people has dramatically declined since the 1960s when the government started federally funding libraries. As more money was available, the quality went down. Think of it like this, if you have a limited book budget in your house, you will be careful about what books you spend money on. You’ll be far less likely to buy twaddle if you know you won’t have enough left over to buy what you need for your kids’ school year.

This question led me to do some research on the books Mason used. I looked at the 14 most commonly used science books from the P.U.S. Programmes between 1921 and 1933 for forms 3 through 6 (middle school through high school).
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