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 …
“When Miss Mason was alive, for example, children were instinctively more obedient and respectful than they are today.”[1] As I have studied Charlotte Mason’s volumes with dozens of men and women over the past six years as part of the Idyll Challenge, I have noticed an occasional but recurring theme. Sooner or later, someone inevitably …
Editor’s Note. The first article I ever read by House of Education graduate Eleanor Frost is her 1913 “Bible Teaching in The Parents’ Union School.” Presented at the 17th annual PNEU Conference, it has been one of my main “go to” references for Bible lessons, and I have read it more times than I can …