Mason Hybrid Schools

Charlotte Mason lived at the turn of the 20th century in England. A devoted Christian, she wrote six books specifically on educating children as persons in the image of God, but also six volumes of poetry called The Savior of the World about the Gospels.

She trained teachers and parents to understand and train children’s minds, but even more their spirits. She taught and then had a network of PNEU schools and opened a teacher’s training college.

Many people are looking for an alternative to a heavy emphasis on early academic and testing performance as the marks of educational success. Teachers and parents often grieve to see children lose their love of learning or become very stressed if they can not measure up to the the ‘standards’.

Mason’s methods offer an antidote to seeing a child as a producer. A child educated with her methods is required to comprehend and read complex vocabulary, grapple with deep ideas, and encounter the strict limits of absolute truths and precise mathematics. High standards apply to the materials the child is given, the child’s environment, discipline, and life, rather than to the child’s production of a final answer.

By building on a solid early childhood foundation on habits of attention, accuracy, observation, etc…accompanied by abundant bodily exercise, and always offering a healthy dose of beauty for the soul, educators can allow children to develop at their own pace and create their own relationships with the people and stories of history, science, literature, art, and music. The feast offered is abundant and healthy, but the ‘digestion’ is the child’s.

While a thorough understanding of her methods can be a paradigm shift that can take months or years to really grasp, many of her methods can begin to be adapted to today’s classrooms with a few key changes.