Who was Charlotte Mason?

Charlotte Mason was a British educator during the previous century. Charlotte founded her “House of Education” in Ambleside, in the heart of the English Lake District, in 1892. Her new innovations about education and strong faith in our Lord Jesus changed the way education was taught at the time. Her teaching lost popularity shortly after her death in 1923 but they are experiencing a rapid rebirth among home schooling families today. Charlotte believed that every child whether rich or poor had the right to a good education. Ms. Mason learned that the key to a good education was to expose the children to a wide variety of good literature. Her approach to education focused on whole/living books and avoided the books of the day that were full of “twaddle”. Twaddle refers to books that are dumbed down for the reader. Living books are books that are passionately written by an author that loves his topic. They are books that come alive and draw the reader into the story. Whole books are books that contain the entire sustance of material; they are the opposite of today’s text books that put only bits and pieces of the story into writing. This method focused on narration, dictation, great art and music, nature notebooks and history notebooks. Charlotte’s students spent there free time in productive activities such as playing out doors, practicing musical instruments, and doing handicrafts such as painting and sewing.

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