Editor’s Note: Many a student who came to Charlotte Mason’s House of Education came because she wanted to become a professional teacher. Some, however, had a different vocation in store: some were to become full-time mothers. A notable example is Eleanor Hughes-Jones. In In Memoriam (1925), she reminisced about her days with Miss Mason in …
Editor’s Note: Lady Hankey’s “introduction to the P.N.E.U. was the discovery of Miss Mason’s book Home Education, and this happened when [her] eldest son was about 2½ years old.”[1] She soon discovered that “Miss Mason’s ideal is that education is a very wide term. It is not a system but an atmosphere which a child …
Editor’s Note: When Charlotte Mason famously wrote in Home Education that “Mothers owe ‘a thinking love’ to their Children,”[1] she was quoting Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Mason was very familiar with Pestalozzi’s work: at age 18 she had studied at the Home and Colonial Society, a school dedicated to training teachers to follow the Pestalozzian method.[2] …
Editor’s Note: Karen Andreola’s 1998 A Charlotte Mason Companion introduced a generation of parents to the Charlotte Mason philosophy. Her encyclopedic book explored element after element of the method, showing parents that Mason’s principles really could be brought to life in our time and place. The 29th chapter of the book delved into poetry and …
Editor’s Note: Mary Alice Douglas (1860–1941) was the daughter of a rector and was “educated at home by a governess in [a] tight-knit, deeply religious family.”[1] In 1890, Douglas was appointed headmistress of Godolphin School in Salisbury. When she assumed the role, there were only 22 students at the school. From these humble beginnings, “she …
Editor’s Note by Richele Baburina Without the influence of Emeline Steinthal, the Parents’ National Education Union might never have come to be. And, without her influence, it might not have had such a far-reaching positive and enduring impact for good. Biographer Essex Cholmondeley explains what happened after their first membership enrollment: Mrs Steinthal was not …
Editor’s Note. The first article I ever read by House of Education graduate Eleanor Frost is her 1913 “Bible Teaching in The Parents’ Union School.” Presented at the 17th annual PNEU Conference, it has been one of my main “go to” references for Bible lessons, and I have read it more times than I can …
Editor’s Note: The PNEU motto was “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.”[1] This motto encapsulated what Charlotte Mason saw as the only three valid instruments of education: “the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas.”[2] But did these three instruments function like the three legs of …
Editor’s Note: One of the most common questions we hear is how to handle a homeschool situation where there are multiple children in multiple forms. This is not a new question; it has challenged teachers for generations. Essex Cholmondeley, Charlotte Mason’s confidante and biographer, took on this and other questions in a 1927 “Notes and …