I am a huge fan of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. But I knew little of their writing group, the Inklings, until I read the book Bandersnatch. Had it only been about meeting in Lewis’s dusty rooms to read their latest poems and book chapters I would have been sold, but there is so much more …
Did you know that keeping a nature notebook has the power to awaken your senses, to teach you how to truly see things that you may have “seen” in a vague way thousands of times before yet never truly seen at all? It’s true. And, by truly seeing, you can then be truly grateful to …
I know of two ways to learn the Charlotte Mason: the way I learned it, and a better way. You don’t have to make the same mistakes I made. Listen in on this talk recorded at the 2018 Living Education Retreat. Special thanks to the music performance by Greg Rolling and Tyson Suemnicht. The accompanying slides …
“What is the most precious thing to have in a house?” Charlotte Mason poses this question at the dinner table one evening. She gleans answers from the dinner guests that we all would agree with: answers such as “a bookcase” and “a cradle.” But not Mason; she rebuts with, “I think I would put space …
I didn’t know her name. I only knew her question. She wrote it anonymously on a piece of paper, a question for the “experts.” We were wrapping up two wonderful days of celebrating Charlotte Mason’s life-giving method at the 2018 Charlotte Mason Soirée Summer Mountain Mini. I was feeling a glow as I sat with the …
Just over two years ago, I first read the article “Three Educational Idylls,” by Charlotte Mason. Published in 1912, it reveals many profound thoughts about Charlotte Mason’s vision for education. (To be honest, I had to look up the word idyll; it means, “a simple descriptive work in poetry or prose that deals with rustic …
Editor’s Note: In April of 1930, the Ambleside Old Students’ Association held their biennial conference at Scale How in Ambleside. The conference featured ten papers which focused on three elements of Charlotte Mason’s thought: the sacredness of the person, the evolution of the individual, and the solidarity of the [human] race. The topic of the sacredness of the person was …
Editor’s Note: In 2017, Simplicity was the theme for the Living Education Retreat. I didn’t attend, but I did get to hear Mary Beuving’s recorded talk on her journey toward simplifying her life, getting rid of things to make room for people. Mary’s testimony is moving and inspiring, but also filled with practical wisdom for …
Editor’s Note, by Paul Hughes: In 1929, the PNEU branch in Melbourne, Australia met to hear the words not of a great educationalist, but of an ordinary mother. Her name was Mrs. H. J. Hannah, and she explained that Charlotte Mason’s call to parents makes us exclaim, “Who is sufficient for these things”? But Mrs. Hannah doesn’t end …