CMP Review 2024-03-26

March 26, 2024

Imagine what it would be like to have a quiet growing place for parents in a digitally saturated world. A place where parents and educators could be mentored and instructed in Charlotte Mason’s ideas without looking at a screen. A place where the beauty of the printed page could speak to the heart.

Cara Williams longed for such a place, but she couldn’t find one. So rather than wish or regret, she did something about it. She recruited like-minded writers and thinkers and formed a journal known to many Charlotte Mason educators today: Common Place Quarterly.

In the course of planning, assembling, and printing this quarterly journal, Cara and her team learned a lot not only about Miss Mason’s philosophy but also about the community that embraces it. A community that is amazingly diverse, and wonderfully rich, but also filled with people who don’t always feel like they belong.

I decided to ask for a behind-the-scenes look at this uncommon quarterly and I got it. Cara Williams and her colleagues Mariah Kochis and Sarah Jonnalagadda agreed to have an in-depth conversation with me about the journal, the ideas it celebrates, and the community it serves. We talked about many things, including how we can work towards being a community where everyone feels like they belong. And we even talked about how this periodical of the printed page stands in a tradition started more than a century ago by Miss Mason herself.

I hope you take the time to listen to this wide-ranging interview and find yourself inspired and informed. You can find it here.

@artmiddlekauff