Editor’s Note: The appearance of Maria Montessori’s first book in English in 1912 greatly alarmed Charlotte Mason and the PNEU. Mason’s response was swift and strong. On December 3 of that same year The Times Educational Supplement published her letter entitled, “Miss Mason on the Montessori System.” This letter became chapter VII of the 1913 …
Editor’s Note: In 1919, a set of students at Charlotte Mason’s House of Education were each invited “to write an essay on some subject suggested by the volumes of the ‘Home Education Series.’”[1] Charlotte Mason herself then reviewed these essays and published them in the opening pages of the November 1919 issue of The Parents’ …
Editor’s Note: This year we are celebrating the Charlotte Mason Centenary — the one-hundred-year anniversary of Charlotte Mason’s death. However, this is not the first Charlotte Mason Centenary. In 1942, a different anniversary was celebrated — the one-hundred-year anniversary of Charlotte Mason’s birth. The January 1942 issue of The Parents’ Review was named the “Centenary …
Editor’s Note. Lucy Barnes was born in 1805 as the first of four children of the poet and philologist William Barnes. She recalled that she and her siblings “never had in the remotest corner of their memories the shadow of an unkind word from their father, who was as ready to play ‘bears’ with them …
Editor’s Note. “Just before the summer holidays [in 1887],” reminisced Charlotte Mason, “a few persons met in a neighbouring drawing-room to discuss a scheme for a Parents’ Educational Union.”[1] As a direct result of that meeting, the PNEU was born. But that was not the only momentous event in PNEU history that took place in …
Editor’s Note: A letter dated February 15, 1935 from Elsie Kitching to Henrietta Franklin included a tantalizing line: Thank you very much for your letter, and all the trouble you have taken to improve the pamphlets. I kept up the type of the Playroom Leaflet, but we had to get some printed off, as we …
Editor’s Note: By Dean and Karen Andreola In an episode of Wodehouse’s humorous stories of Wooster and Jeeves, the servant Jeeves ruefully remarks to his hapless master that he is retiring to bed “with an improving book.” Ha. Not likely. Jeeves is good at pulling the wool over the eyes of Bertie Wooster. “An improving …
Editor’s Note: Last week we shared Dr. R. Bryce Gibson’s February 1915 article “Education and Personality.” Gibson was a professor in Melbourne, Australia who was intrigued by Charlotte Mason’s reflections on the philosophy of Rudolf Eucken. He prepared an address for the Victorian Branch of the PNEU which was later published in The Parents’ Review in …
Editor’s Note: In Charlotte Mason’s day, The Parents’ Review reached the ends of the earth — or at least, the ends of the English-speaking earth. Charlotte Mason’s fascinating June 1914 article “Trop de Zèle” was no exception, and it quickly reached the great island continent of Australia. Dr. R. Bryce Gibson was a Professor of …