OakEdu follows some ideas of Charlotte Mason: an education should run on the fuel of a child's wonder and imagination, rather than the artificial dry stimulus of grades, prizes and happy-face stickers. Educating is not pushing, stuffing and filling up meaningless facts into the head. Knowledge is not a suntan lotion spread onto the skin. Knowledge is more the result of what is happening from within, more like the results of a well-digested, nourishing meal. Children gain knowledge through the act of digesting living books, games and activities. When children are in contact with living thoughts, they learn much better. Encouraging the student to narrate, to create some storytelling, to express, tell back, write down what has been learned are some of the best ways for the student to acquire knowledge. Because narration takes the place of questionnaires, paragraphs of fill-in-the-blanks and multiple-choice tests, it enables the child to use all her/his mental faculties. The student writes a response with her/his own paragraphs, tells her/his version of what is understood and experienced. When given books of literary quality, his/her mind does for itself the sorting, sequencing, selecting, connecting, rejecting and classifying thinking skills which are the essence of cleverness.