Literature-rich curricula
inspired by the work of
Charlotte Mason

Beside the legacy of the students themselves, she left behind a six-volume set of books covering all aspects of her educational ideas. It also covers pertinent issues of moral, intellectual and physical development. Her biography, The Story of Charlotte Mason (Child Light, Ltd., 2000) has been reissued. She herself did not want a biography, “I do not wish my life to be written, it is the work that matters; it will live.”

Miss Mason’s early training was at a time when educators were just beginning to recognize each child was an individual with worth and value. Her contemporaries were such leading lights as literary giants William Wordsworth and William Coleridge, social reformer John Ruskin, and educational reformer Maria Montessori. The “kindergarten movement” was sweeping the country. Through those early years of training, she was forming her own unique ideas.

After a long apprenticeship learning from and observing children, Miss Mason began to lecture. She found an immediate audience for her ideas.  From the 1870s onward, she worked tirelessly to inspire others to use her ideas. In 1887, encouraged by the reception to Home Education, she set about to make a “ground plan of education—a common possession” (Cholmondley, p.v.).  As a result, schools were formed devoted to her principles, and teachers were trained at the “House of Education,” and then went into employment in the English public school system. Ultimately, her influence became worldwide as PNEU developed curriculum for British and American families around the globe.

Though her methods were widely assimilated both in Britain and in the United States (e.g., the whole language movement of recent years is an echo of her work) the Christian principles on which they were founded were left behind. Her many books and methods of teacher training were forgotten primarily because they were openly Christian in viewpoint. By the mid-twentieth century, education had become the increasingly secular, and her extraordinarily effective methods of education began to be overlooked in favor of more “progressive” forms.

The 1960s could still find some Charlotte Mason schools in England. In 1984 Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, in her book For the Children’s Sake (Crossway Books), introduced readers to Miss Mason’s ideas on educating the whole child—body, soul and spirit—as well as her ideas on character development. The homeschooling movement was then gaining momentum, and Miss Mason’s ideas were welcomed. Karen and Dean Andreola were introduced to the Mason method while living in England. Thanks to them, the entire six-volume set of Mason’s work has been reissued (Tyndale House, 1989).

Since that time, appreciation for Miss Mason’s work has steadily gained momentum in the United States. There are seven elementary schools using the Charlotte Mason method and thousands of parents homeschool their children using her ideas. Organizations have sprung up to further the work of Miss Mason: the Charlotte Mason Foundation, the Charlotte Mason Education Foundation, and the Charlotte Mason Schools International.

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