CMP Review 2024-06-04

June 4, 2024

A common request I hear is for more information about Charlotte Mason’s own life and work. People want to know what she was like as a person, and they want to know how she organized her own House of Education. They want more than just ideas. They want details.

I think this is a natural desire. Charlotte Mason herself did not reduce knowledge to mere abstract ideas. Rather, in her final volume, she wrote that knowledge is “ideas clothed upon with facts.” The fact of the matter is, we all want ideas with their clothes on. We want to see ideas walking around in the real world that we live in. We want to see ideas touching the earth.

Perhaps that desire is what prompted the May 1952 issue of The Parents’ Review. The whole issue was dedicated to memories — memories of Charlotte Mason, her colleagues, and her work. But this was no mere nostalgia or reminiscence; always the view was towards linking the work of Charlotte Mason in the past to the new work of the present and the future.

The articles in this issue do not tell us everything we want to know, but they do tell us something. They give us facts and stories. And those facts and stories are wonderful — but they are only clothing. Today we begin a series of articles transcribed from the “Memories” issue. We hope you read or listen with interest, always seeking the ideas which are nestled inside the facts. Find “Memories of the Past” by Henrietta Franklin here.

@artmiddlekauff