Editor’s Note: Lady Hankey’s “introduction to the P.N.E.U. was the discovery of Miss Mason’s book Home Education, and this happened when [her] eldest son was about 2½ years old.”[1] She soon discovered that “Miss Mason’s ideal is that education is a very wide term. It is not a system but an atmosphere which a child …
We all know the story. A young, impressionable Miss Mason travels to Florence. With guidebook in hand, she beholds a glorious fresco, the embodiment of a medieval philosophy of education. Her eyes are opened and in her heart she cries, “Eureka!” Unlooked for, unasked for, yet marvelously presented to her mind, she receives as if …
Editor’s Note: When Charlotte Mason famously wrote in Home Education that “Mothers owe ‘a thinking love’ to their Children,”[1] she was quoting Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Mason was very familiar with Pestalozzi’s work: at age 18 she had studied at the Home and Colonial Society, a school dedicated to training teachers to follow the Pestalozzian method.[2] …
Editor’s Note: Karen Andreola’s 1998 A Charlotte Mason Companion introduced a generation of parents to the Charlotte Mason philosophy. Her encyclopedic book explored element after element of the method, showing parents that Mason’s principles really could be brought to life in our time and place. The 29th chapter of the book delved into poetry and …
Richele Baburina speaks with the great-granddaughter of Emeline Steinthal, Charlotte Mason’s dear friend and colleague, who brings the PNEU to life with fascinating details and astounding anecdotes of Ambleside, G. K. Chesterton, and more. Links: G. K. Chesterton’s Christmas Poem, published in The Parents’ Review A Devoted Life: Celebrating Emeline Steinthal Influence, by Emeline Steinthal, …
Editor’s Note: Mary Alice Douglas (1860–1941) was the daughter of a rector and was “educated at home by a governess in [a] tight-knit, deeply religious family.”[1] In 1890, Douglas was appointed headmistress of Godolphin School in Salisbury. When she assumed the role, there were only 22 students at the school. From these humble beginnings, “she …
In 1984, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay published her groundbreaking book For the Children’s Sake. For many of us, it was our first introduction to the Charlotte Mason method. But how did Macaulay herself learn the method? In her book, she describes how her children were blessed by a school that “still practiced the gentle art of …
During most of the past six years I have volunteered helping with the pre-school and elementary aged children at our church. Although our church family includes many loving and well-intentioned educators, I am not aware of anyone else inclined towards Mason’s philosophy. In fact, much of what I observed over the years runs contrary to …
Editor’s Note by Richele Baburina Without the influence of Emeline Steinthal, the Parents’ National Education Union might never have come to be. And, without her influence, it might not have had such a far-reaching positive and enduring impact for good. Biographer Essex Cholmondeley explains what happened after their first membership enrollment: Mrs Steinthal was not …