Welcome to a Common Place!
Education: An atmosphere. A discipline. A life.
Welcome!
The “common place” book is perhaps my favorite technology. Such books are for gathering insights from reading, quiet observations you make as you trundle along public transit, brilliant (and perhaps not-so-brilliant) insights that find you in your quiet moments. Do you keep one? I hope so.
This newsletter is obviously not a traditional common place book because I’m inviting you in to eavesdrop. It’s also going to be focused primarily on my reading of Charlotte Mason and her first volume Home Education.
A bit of background. In 2017 my wife and I helped start a school in Hamilton, Ontario. The school is technically a “classical” and Christian school, but deeply leans into some of the principles of Charlotte Mason. As the school was being imagined, we were fortunate enough to know Dr. Deani Van Pelt who is a leading scholar of Charlotte Mason and very active in the world of Mason education both in Canada and around the world. She inspired us by telling us the story of Mason, her movement in Ambleside, and the key principles she believed: the personhood of the child, the cultivation of habits, the science of relations, nature study, living books… and the list went on.
Although Mason has been gone for over a century, through people like Deani and so many others, her vision and voice has carried on. More than anything, though, Deani channelled the spirit of Mason and encouraged us to “just start” our little school. It would be small, precarious, and probably a little weird… but so many of the best things in life are. So we did. In 2018, Oak Hill Academy was born and, today, the school is set to welcome over 170 students next fall, has bought and restored an old school outside the city, and is now one of the most beautiful schools I have ever been a part of.
I’m an academic by trade. I work at Redeemer University and teach “old books” to young men and women. I love it. But one of the challenges of old books is that they don’t use references the way we do now, they are filled with difficult and often archaic terms and expressions, and they express attitudes and opinions that can unsettle or alienate us in the present. Reading old books is delightful, but sometimes the hard work becomes a real barrier to the delight.
What does this have to do with Mason? I was recently approached by another academic, Dr. Kevin Foth, who works in a Mason school in Colorado. Kevin had the brilliant idea of providing a “critical edition” of Mason’s educational volumes. While her work is in no way as old as Tacitus or even Dante, there are still some challenges for the modern reader in making sense of this very nineteenth century British writer.
So… long story short: Baker Academic agreed to trial two critical editions of Mason’s educational philosophy. We are starting with Home Education (vol 1) and School Education (vol 3). We began the project in May and are already deep into it, but as I reflected on all the insights I was having as editing and researching, I thought it might be of interest to the growing Mason movement to “listen in” on some of the finding we had, especially findings that likely will die on the cutting room floor as we move towards publication.
Mason famously said that education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life. My hope is that this little newsletter has a hospitable atmosphere, one from an academic who is very much an amateur when it comes to Mason (which, etymologically, is tied to one who ‘loves’ and desires to know more. I hope the habit of regular reflection is life-giving both to me and the handful of people who follow. And I hope, more than anything, Mason inspires you to consider the important role YOU can play in directing or redirecting the education of the next generation.
Welcome friends! I look forward to thinking about Charlotte Mason with you over the next months.