Episode 154: Charlotte Mason’s Life and Work

We begin a new year with Charlotte Mason’s birthday by celebrating her life. This podcast episode reviews the timeline of Charlotte Mason’s life, her accomplishments and the progression of her career, and reveals in part the beautiful influence her generous life offers us today.

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“I do not wish my life to be written, it is the work that matters, it will live.” (Charlotte Mason to Elsie Kitching)

“It would seem a far cry from Undine to a ‘liberal education’ but there is a point of contact between the two; a soul awoke within a water-sprite at the touch of love; so, I have to tell of the awakening of a ‘general soul’ at the touch of knowledge. Eight years ago the ‘soul’ of a class of children in a mining village school awoke simultaneously at this magic touch and has remained awake. We know that religion can awaken souls, that love makes a new man, that the call of a vocation may do it, and in the age of the Renaissance, men’s souls, the general soul, awoke to knowledge: but this appeal rarely reaches the modern soul; and, notwithstanding the pleasantness attending lessons and marks in all our schools, I believe the ardour for knowledge in the child of this mining village is a phenomenon that indicates new possibilities. Already, many thousands of the children of the Empire had experienced this intellectual conversion, but they were the children of educated person. To find that the children of a mining population were equally responsive seemed to open a new hope for the world. It may be that the souls of all children are waiting for the call of knowledge to awaken them to delightful living.” (6/xxv)