CMP Review 2024-08-06

August 6, 2024

As countless people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives approach the writings of Charlotte Mason, there is one thing we can all agree on: the world has changed since Mason’s day. One hundred years have passed since Mason’s death, and all who are inspired by her ideas continue to wrestle with a major question: how would Miss Mason think and talk about things differently if she were living in our time?

It is a difficult question to answer because we never knew Charlotte Mason. We were never members of the PNEU. But there is a woman who was, a torchbearer who passed on the torch, a leader who spent her entire life under the umbrella of the PNEU.

Joan Molyneux was born to parents who were PNEU members. She attended PNEU schools and the House of Education, taught at PNEU schools, and eventually led the PNEU School itself. And then she met Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, and offered an in-depth interview in the years leading up to the publication of For the Children’s Sake.

Joan Molyneux knew the world was changing. She believed that Charlotte Mason’s timeless philosophy needed a fresh explanation for a generation that had grown up with the books of C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Jean Piaget. She was uniquely qualified to connect the 19th century to the 20th century. And in 1971, she did.

That year she published a six-part presentation of the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason. It was a work of inestimable value. But sadly, it reached the hands of only a small number of subscribers before being forgotten by time.

Until today. The restatement of a philosophy has been rediscovered. Now for the first time since 1971 we are pleased to present the monumental work of Joan Molyneux for free. Find it at the profile link.

@artmiddlekauff