My early childhood memories are of me running barefoot on a farm in South Africa. My grandparents had a small piece of land where we milked cows by hand, raised our own chickens, and grew our own corn. Whenever I visit a dairy farm, the scent of fresh cow dung always transports me back to …
Editor’s Note: In 2009, Dr. Benjamin Bernier completed his groundbreaking book entitled Education for the Kingdom: An Exploration of the Religious Foundation of Charlotte Mason’s Educational Philosophy. The book remains the finest exposition in print of the theological origin and basis of the Charlotte Mason method. In his research, Bernier explored many documents that had …
Several years ago, a good friend of mine told me that he had been asked by his church to teach a class for some of the children. He had never done anything like this before, so he was not sure what to do or what to expect, but he said he would do it anyway. …
Editor’s Note: When the reader of Charlotte Mason’s first volume has reached only the twelfth page, he or she is struck by Mason’s bold hermeneutical stance: It is worth while for parents to ponder every utterance in the Gospels about the children, divesting themselves of the notion that these sayings belong, in the first place, …
Editor’s Note: The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus famously wrote: God … either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able… if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from …
Last year I received an email from a friend that included the following: When you have a moment, I would be very interested in your thoughts on this from Ourselves: “Nay, that very story of the stopping of the sun in its course, an embedded myth, let us say, is recorded, we may believe, by …
In a Charlotte Mason education, we rely on books—not a teacher or a set of “tools” or textbooks—not only to inspire interest in the subject but also to ignite and shape our children’s imaginations; invite imitation of the True, Good, and Beautiful; and imbibe fruitful ideas that cause them to grow as persons. But have …
What was Charlotte Mason’s source for her philosophy of education? It is a question that I have discussed and debated at length over the past several years. And it is a question which does not seem yet to be settled to everyone’s satisfaction within the Charlotte Mason community. Answers seem to fall into three general …
Although I grew up in a liturgical church with the changing seasons (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany into Ordinary Time, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and then back to Ordinary Time) and the changing colors (purple, white, green, purple, white, to green again), I thought that these seasons and colors were silly and shallow — my life was run …