Editor’s Note, by Art Middlekauff In April 1936, “418 members and friends of the Parents’ National Educational Union, and 268 children being educated in the Parents’ Union School” converged upon Ambleside in England’s lovely Lake District for an extraordinary conference.[1] It was “The Jubilee Conference for Parents and Teachers and The Children’s Gathering,” celebrating the …
Editor’s Note, by Art Middlekauff In 1936, Elsie Kitching wrote a book review for The Parents’ Review, the journal she edited from 1923 to 1949. Published in the April issue, the piece covered The Year Book of Education, 1936, edited by Harley V. Usill. Kitching enumerated the key sections of the book and noted some …
Editor’s Note, by Art Middlekauff N. McLeod enrolled in the House of Education in 1914[1] before heading up a PNEU school in Richmond, Surrey from at least 1921[2] to 1931.[3] In 1927, she contributed a short article to The Parents’ Review entitled “The P.U.S. Motto.”[4] The article is memorable to me because it opens with …
Editor’s Note, by Art Middlekauff In November 1909, the 13th Annual PNEU Conference was held in Birmingham.[1] On the morning of the second day, a paper by Dr. Helen Webb was read entitled “Environment in Relation to Nervous Stability.” It offered advice on how to raise healthy children in our modern hectic era, and it …
Editor’s Note by Haley Struecker Today, we continue our short series of recommended reading from the Occupations leaflet with another article by Charlotte Mason’s “Beloved Physician”, Doctor Helen Webb. In the 1913 volume of the Parents’ Review, a lecture she gave at a PNEU Conference nurses’ meeting was published as “A Talk to Nurses on …
Editor’s Note, by Art Middlekauff “Dr. [Helen] Webb was one of the oldest friends of our dear Founder, Miss Charlotte Mason,” recalled Elsie Kitching. “She was a member of the original Council of the P.N.E.U. and was already lecturing for the Union in 1891… From then onwards few years passed without lectures from her, … …
Editor’s Note: Antoinette Devonshire was born in 1893 and arrived at the House of Education in 1915.[1] As a student of Charlotte Mason herself, Antoinette seems to have particularly excelled in French: her “Notes of Lessons” on French reading was published in the November 1915 Parents’ Review. Then the March 1917 issue of L’Umile Pianta …
Editor’s Note: Essex Cholmondeley (1892–1985) is mostly remembered today as the biographer of Charlotte Mason. She also wrote the impactful booklet Parents Are Peacemakers, revived in recent years by Nancy Kelly. Cholmondeley’s association with the PNEU began in 1911 when Helen Wix, a graduate of the House of Education, became the governess of Essex’s younger …
Editor’s Note, by Haley Struecker In the second part of her article “Children Up to School Age and Beyond,” Elsie Kitching clarified for parents: There should be no so-called ‘lessons’ in the playroom. ‘Occupations’ is the right word, and for these no time-table should be set and there should be a sense of much freedom …