Charlotte Mason (1842-1923) was a British educator and reformer at the turn of the twentieth century. Her teaching methods led to a shift from utilitarian education to the education of a child upon living ideas. For those of you tuning in for the first time, welcome! Here’s the deal: Every weekday, we highlight the stories of iconic women in history you may not know about, but definitely should. We’re talking about women from around the world and throughout history. Each month is themed. This month we’re going back to school, highlighting educators and intellectuals.
This month, we're going back to school with stories of the most influential women educators in history.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica.
All month, we’re going back to school, highlighting women who had a major impact on the world of education. Today, we’re talking about a woman who changed homeschooling forever. Her practices and books helped parents understand their children’s needs in the classroom and at home. She focused less on utilitarian practices and more on the liberal arts. Many of her books and methods are still used today. We’re talking about Charlotte Mason.
Charlotte was born Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason in a town called Garth on the northwest tip of Wales. She was born on January 1st, 1842. She was an only child and was educated at home by her parents. When she left home, she moved to Worthing in West Sussex. There, she spent ten years teaching at girls’ secondary school. While she was in Worthing, Charlotte began to develop her own original teaching methods.
At the time, and even today, many schools used a classical education system. This system offered students three main categories of study: grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. It placed emphasis on writing, systemic grades, and often left the fine arts outside of the main curriculum.
Charlotte disagreed with this system. She believed it didn’t offer the full scope of education to children, and was especially interested in making the liberal arts more accessible. As a result, she started to pen her own books. She began with a popular series on geography. In 1887, she co-founded the Parent’s Educational Union, or PEU, which helped provide resources for parents homeschooling their children.
In 1891, Charlotte moved to Ambleside, England, where she wrote her most well known works. She published a series of books that explained her educational philosophies. At the beginning of each, she summarized her fundamental ideas. First, she wrote, “education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.” Secondly, “Education is the science of relations.”
Charlotte believed children were not only capable of understanding the lessons of liberal arts, but were innately born as people and thinkers whose own ideas should be respected, regardless of their age. Charlotte thought children were drawn to honest desires, and that the role of adults was to help rid them of bad traits in order to reach their potential.
Her curriculum revolved around providing children with what she called “living books,” or books written by people with great passion for the subject they’re writing about. She also developed “habit training.” This involved having students repeat certain actions and practices that would encourage attention, obedience, truthfulness, neatness, and cleanliness, among other traits.
Charlotte included several subjects and practices that the classical system cast aside. She placed emphasis on poetry, art, and scripture, for example. She was also a proponent of prioritizing a child’s ability to speak and summarize arguments over their ability to write.
Charlotte expected her students to strive for perfection. She said, “No work should be given to a child that he cannot execute perfectly, and then perfection should be required of him as a matter of course.”
By 1892, Charlotte’s methods were becoming a well-known alternative to the classical system. She launched and served as editor in chief of the Parents’ Review in order to keep in touch with parents in the organization. Her methods were also the groundwork for educators at the newly-established Parents Review School, and she established the House of Education to train future governesses in her schooling.
Charlotte continued to teach and publish into the 1920s. She created a teacher training college in Ambleside. Near the end of her life, Charlotte oversaw the development of more Parents’ Union Schools in England, as well as correspondence programs for British parents living overseas.
Charlotte died on January 16, 1923, at the age of 81. After her death, the Ambleside training school went through a series of administrative changes and is today a campus of St. Martin’s College. The training program closed in 2008. But Charlotte’s ideas remain in practice: they found new popularity when they were republished in the 1980s. Today, Charlotte Mason curriculum can be found across the US, most often in homeschool environments. It’s also sometimes used in charter schools.
All month, we’re honoring champions of education. For more on why we’re doing what we’re doing, check out our newsletter, Womannica Weekly.
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Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator.
Talk to you tomorrow!