(Formerly Ambleside Community School) 3816 Toledo Avenue, Detroit MI 48216. 313.841.6848
Charlotte Mason: An Inspiration for Change
“All education is self-education.” “ Not what we know, but what we are waiting to know, is the delectable part of knowledge.”
“At last there is hope that the offspring of working-class parents may be led into the wide pastures of a liberal education.”
“In the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of practical everyday life, his God doth instruct him and doth teach him, her God doth instruct her and doth teach her. Let this be the mother’s key to the whole of the education of each boy and each girl; not of her children; the divine Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude, but with each single child.”
These are the words of Charlotte Marie Mason an innovative British educator at the turn of the twentieth century. Orphaned as a teen and faced with a system that underestimated the abilities of women and the poor, she worked to bring about changes in the English philosophy of education. Her work included a parent’s educational union, a teaching college and a practicing school, as well as numerous published works. Charlotte Mason never married or had children of her own, but she had much wisdom concerning, and great respect for, them. Her great respect of children and the richness of her curriculum have caused a renewed interest in her work throughout the world. These, along with her willingness to work for changes she believed necessary, inspired us to start a school based on her philosophy of education, in Southwest Detroit Born in 1842 in Liverpool, England, Charlotte Mason was the only child of two only children. Her father was a merchant and her mother was often ill. When Charlotte was eight, she saw a teacher walking with a group of poor children, and she resolved that, “Teaching was the thing to do, and above all the teaching of poor children.” Her father’s business went bankrupt, and both her parents died when she was sixteen, leaving her with no money and no relatives.Family friends took her in and helped pay for her schooling at the Home and Colonial Training College, the first teacher training college in England. Upon completion of her studies there, Miss Mason took a position teaching at a newly formed infant school (schools begun by Robert Owen to get small children out of the mills and to give them a place to be while their mothers worked.)
In 1865, she helped establish a high school for girls. At that time, only a few schools for older girls existed, and they were expensive and unattainable to most. She taught at this school until 1873, when she was asked to lecture in elementary school teaching methods at the Bishop Otter Teacher Training College.
Miss Mason became very ill in 1878 and needed to rest. Her long-time friend Mrs. Grovehamsaid of her, “Charlotte was always frail, and even at college suffered from heart trouble, though it was not diagnosed at that time.” It was during this bout with illness that she began to write, and published the first of a set of geography books. Charlotte believed that she had knowledge to impart to parents, but she was always careful not to appear presumptuous in her dealings with them. She said, “The practices of each home are sacred … but the principles of early training are another matter; there is no more helpful work to be done than to bring these principles to the doors of parents of whatever degree.” To raise money for a school, she began to lectureto parents on educational topics. This led to the publication of Home Education (the first of a six-volume set of educational books for parents and teachers), and she became the “Dr. Spock” of her time. Many parents wrote to her for advice on educating their children, so she helped them organize into the Parents National Education Union, or the PNEU, and began a monthly publication called The Parent Review. From there, the movement grew to include educating governesses and schoolteachers, and so in 1892 The House of Education was established at Ambleside, England. It later became The Charlotte Mason Teaching College, and in 1968 the college associated with the University of Lancaster. She also established a practicing school for the college called Fairfield. Here, the children of Ambleside could attend without charge. PNEU schools began to crop up all over England, and correspondence courses went out to British families around the world. Charlotte Mason was a woman of vision. She believed that regardless of their circumstances every child should have a rich education, and that parents play the most important role in a child’s education. The death of her parents in her teen years and her poor health throughout her life could have kept Charlotte from such a large calling on her life, but she was also a woman of will, who lived by her own words, “I am, I can, I ought, I will.” and “It is well we should recognize that the business of education is with us all our lives, that we must always go on increasing our knowledge.”
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