This month marks the 100th anniversary of Charlotte Mason’s death, and Calvary Schools is setting this week aside to share with our community more about her life and history. Each day, you’ll be learning from educators around the country who have been impacted by her teachings and have dedicated their lives to educational renewal one student at a time.

Charlotte M. Mason (1842-1923)

By Russ York
Head of School, Ambleside Fredericksburg

One afternoon, not too long ago, as the afternoon sun was streaming through the office windows at Ambleside School of Fredericksburg, a young man of eight years or so, with much curiosity in his eyes, approached our administrative assistant with his head cocked to one side and asked if Charlotte Mason was the first principal of our school.

The answer of course was no. Charlotte Mason died 77 years before our school doors opened.

However, it could also be said that, in a different way, Mason was indeed the first principal of our school. As a principal’s primary aims are to guide teachers in the proper pedagogy and the philosophy underpinning said methods of instruction, Charlotte Mason is very much the founding and current principal of every Ambleside school. She is our guide day in and day out, leading us with her simple, yet ever-challenging, notion that education is “an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.”

But, beyond educational quotes and portraits, who was Charlotte Mason and what makes her philosophy worth following?

Born on New Year’s Day, 1842, Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason, grew up an only child to parents who were themselves only children, leading to what was most certainly a very quiet and lonely existence, but one in which young Charlotte’s imagination most certainly grew to accommodate great visions. Visions in which people could reach their divinely determined potential when set before His feast.

These early years were set on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, near the same line of latitude where she now lays in rest at Ambleside, which is nestled in the beautiful setting of the Lake District of Northwest England. It is there, where visitors of her grave can read her headstone, which lies in prominence among other champions of “education for all,” and where one will read, “Thine eyes shall see the King in His Beauty,” a quote from the prophet Isaiah.

This quote summarizes not only the hope of eternal beauty beheld as one passes through the gates of death, but also the hope that Charlotte Mason was driven by as she crafted an educational model that put children and teachers alike in the best position to cast their gaze upon the King in His beauty as it exists in the ideas of the world He made.

Growing up in a time when the world was changing from agrarian to industrial, from faith proven by science to faith in science, Charlotte Mason knew the bringing up of children must be given a place of prominence in every nation that values human freedom and collective responsibility for the shaping of the nations. As progressive, industrial, and Darwinian thought became more and more pervasive in the vacuum of educational leadership, which was garnering more attention than ever, Mason thought and wrote, so that ripe environment might be filled with thoughts towards the wonder of man as God’s own, rather than man as his own. A truth indicated by the Pauline phrase, “Ye are not your own”, which found its way into Mason’s writings, and is a fitting description of the hope for the prospective outcome of every recipient of the applied dictums of her educational philosophy and practice.

To achieve the lofty end of reshaping the errors of the past and shaping the future forms of her nation’s thoughts on education, for the sake of children, Mason founded The Parents’ National Educational Union, The Parents’ Union School & The House of Education, for the training of parents and teachers, in addition to authoring countless essays, lectures, and six volumes of rich, yet entirely practical, educational philosophy. Her written work and personal influence would go on to inform the work in hundreds of schools and support the proper formation of thousands (and counting) of children across the globe.

To sum up such a rich life in so short a space is an impossible task, but, painting with a very broad brush, one could say Charlotte Mason dedicated her entire life to the betterment of others by pouring herself into parents, teachers, and students that all would come to know the beauty that surrounds each moment of every life, and that we would recognize it as the shadow and gift of a loving King.

By her faithful work and example we are changed and given greater understanding of our place in God’s world, equipped to be co-heirs and co-laborers for His Kingdom yet to come. Grand visions, indeed, for which we are grateful.

The Origin of the Ambleside Name

Charlotte Mason moved to the town of Ambleside, England in 1891, where she founded the House of Education, a training school for governesses. By this time, Mason had already written five books in a popular geography series and Home Education, between 1881-1886. Ambleside served as the home of all of her educational reforms, and the building where her training college was housed still stands as a museum at the University of Cumbria.

Just up the road from Ambleside, William Wordsworth and his wife are buried in the churchyard at Grasmere. Author Beatrix Potter also called the Lake District home in her later years. The Armitt Museum in Ambleside hosts exhibitions of both Potter’s and Mason’s works.

Ambleside Schools International was named after this historic location because of its significance in Mason’s life and career.