Thanks for 2010-Moving Forward by Carroll Smith

As we come to the end of 2010, it is fitting to give thanks for what has been accomplished “to recover and promote the educational philosophy and practice of Charlotte Mason.”  Several significant projects were in process for this year: the digitalisation project of the Mason archives that helps all of us interested in learning more about Mason’s work;  the arduous work of developing a curriculum and it’s “pre-pilot;”  the thought provoking and helpful 2010 Charlotte Mason Educational Conference;  and finally, the many insightful and helpful blogs.  I want to say thank you to the many people who have made such projects possible.

A huge thanks must be extended to Dr. Deani Van Pelt for all her countless hours of work both in writing the grants that provided the funds and in coordinating the efforts to get the digitalisation of the Charlotte Mason archives project started.  Anyone who has ever written grants, received them and did the subsequent work knows what a large task it is.  The Mason archives were released through an October Charlotte Mason Education Symposium and Conference at Redeemer University in Ontario.

The "Four Pumpkins"-- Nancy Kelly, Melanie Walker, Laurie Bestvater and Jennifer Gagnon at the Charlotte Mason Education Symposium and Conference at Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario

Marlene Powers demonstrating the Charlotte Mason Digital Collection Archive

Thank you to Marlene Powers, librarian at Redeemer, who took on the task of organising and setting up the archive.  Although funds are still needed to complete the digitalising work, because of Dr. Deani Van Pelt’s efforts, a huge step has been taken to make the Mason archive accessible world wide. We also appreciate those volunteers who did the actual digitalisation, much of which was painstakingly tedious work: Dr. Jack Beckman, Lisa Cadora, Gladys Schaefer and her daughters, Jennifer Spencer and others.   As in most cases it takes many

The Mason Archive Digitizers during a panel discussion at the 2010 Charlotte Mason Educational Conference, Gardner-Webb University

individuals to accomplish a task as large as this one.  This is a significant step forward in “recovering and promoting” the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason.  Those of us working on the curriculum are thrilled to have access to this archive.

Developing a Mason curriculum requires a team effort and the self-sacrificing giving of time, knowledge and collaboration from a group of curriculum designers has been a colossal gift. Laurie Bestvater has worked tirelessly on leading the curriculum design team of Sandy Rusby Bell, Jennifer Gagnon, Tammy Glaser, Rebekah Brown Hierholzer, Nicolle Hutchinson, Nancy Kelly, Leslie Laurio, Jennifer Spencer and Melanie Walker.  There is a much bigger list of individuals who have also assisted this project who have also been gracious with their time and knowledge.  For fear of missing someone, I will not mention names, but we are grateful to them for their many hours of work.  Laurie Bestvater and the team who has worked so diligently on this project bring to us years, even decades, of commitment to the study and practice of Mason in both the classroom and home

Curriculum Design Team members and "Mini Pilot" members

school. It has been a tremendous encouragement to me to work with these individuals who, not being content with a surface reading of Mason or a blended instructional approach, have dedicated untold hours of intense, detailed study of Mason’s work which has been worked out carefully into practice.  This curriculum will not be available for another full year because we are in the refining/testing stage where a small group is doing a “mini pre-pilot” to help us work out problems.   The design team is dedicated to finding the best living books available for a Mason curriculum and next year a larger pilot will be offered.  If you ask the team about books or have other questions about the curriculum at this point, the team will simply say they cannot share information because we are still in the try and test stage, and once we have piloted it and feel more confident about what we are suggesting, we will share it with others.

The annual Charlotte Mason Education conferences held each year at Gardner Webb University provide this

Friends at the 2010 Charlotte Mason Educational Conference

wonderful nourishing and nurturing time with like minded educational colleagues.  We could not do the conferences without the generosity of volunteers who do things such as prepare lectures, supply snacks, or help with transportation. Many thanks to all our conference speakers.  The 2010 conference was especially exciting as fresh research and study was presented on new topics.

Comments from the conference attendees expressed appreciation for: “opportunity to look at a student’s lab book–very helpful and inspiring,” “love the thought of raising children who care,”  “extensive list of notebooks CM used,” “the relaxed atmosphere,” “the in depth, interesting and useful information,” “sharing ideas with other participants.”

I loved this conference and am deeply grateful for the opportunity to come and be immersed in this lovely world of Charlotte Mason (both the beauty of the campus and the beauty of thought!!!).

These comments could only come because of dedicated speakers who spent hours preparing.  A giant thank you to them.

Theater Technical Director and Gardner-Webb Professor Christopher Keene at the 2010 Teen Conference discussing Science Fiction film

For the last two years a Teen Conference ran concurrently with the regular conference.  Thanks to Jack Kelly, Hannah Hoyt and Tim Laurio for their work and dedication with the teen conference.  Thanks to those such as Chris Keene, Dr. Jack Beckman and others who spent time with the teens.

Running a blog that speaks to Mason educators in a variety of settings on a variety of topics could be a very time consuming, difficult and overwhelming task were it not for our weekly blog writers.  I am thankful to these individuals who have fed our minds with ideas about Mason, history, science, art, and a whole host of topics.  This part of recovering and promoting Mason’s work could not be done without a number of writers.  We look forward to interesting blogs in 2011.  Thanks to Jennifer Spencer who has helped this past year by taking on the responsibility of receiving and posting the blogs.

Carroll Smith and Jennifer Spencer at the "Mini Pilot" meeting.

And finally, we have several new board members on the ChildLightUSA board.  They are Jennifer Gagnon of Ontario, Gladys Schaefer of Birmingham, Alabama, Steve Ritter of  Broad Run, VA (Northern VA)  and Kent Kelly of Windom, MN.  We welcome them onto the ChildLightUSA board.  They join the current board of myself, Lisa Cadora, Jack Beckman, Bobby Scott and Ranald Macaulay.  We are thankful to these board members as they serve the Mason community in promoting Mason’s educational philosophy and pedagogy.

Thanks to many others of you who have served and ministered in various ways this past year from leading Mason study groups, speaking at local conferences, writing grants, working to establish schools, mentoring Mason newbies and in so many other ways. Some of these efforts are not without a cost. In trying to implement a Mason education which is so contrary to the matterialistic education so prevalent today, some people are giving up a second income to home educate their children while others are having to deal with opposition from local school boards.  Some face negative family or community or church backlash from those unwilling to believe Mason’s practices.  My appreciation and gratitude and admiration are extended to all of you willing to pay the costs to educate children using a Mason paradigm.

Marlene Powers and Dr. John Thorley at the Charlotte Mason Education Symposium and Conference at Redeemer University College

There are many people to thank and I am sure I have forgotten something or someone important.

Thanks to everyone for a wonderful 2010.  May God’s grace be on this educational paradigm.

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Common Tender Talk by Dr. Deani Van Pelt, Redeemer University College

Early in the first of her six poetic volumes titled The Saviour of the World, Charlotte Mason (1842-1923) retells the story of the visit between two expectant women, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Elizabeth, the mother of John.  In these passionate moving verses, Mason conveys her deep intuition about the possibility and promise of caring, mutually encouraging relationships between women called to walk a similar journey.

Mason describes the anxious courage with which the young virgin traveled a great distance “that she might ease her bosom in her kinswoman’s arms” (Mason, 1908, p. 22).  Through her description Mason touches on the archetypal ache for a loving familial breast upon which our tears may be wept and courage for tomorrow found.

The content of the conversations between the expectant women, Mason imagines, ranged from the ordinary—such as the feeding of infants, the illnesses of childhood, and concerns for their child’s adulthood—to the sublime doxological moments in which God is blessed and their souls are laid bare.  “The common tender talk that mothers use was theirs” (p. 26).  Although never a mother herself, Mason touches on the wonderous, intimate, formative conversations which first time mothers (and perhaps first time educators) of all times and places share.

Mason’s sensitivity to the promise of gentle intimate relationships between women is doubtlessly rooted—at least in part—in her own lived experience.  Coombs (2009) has recently found that Mason as a fifteen year old girl nursed her own mother, a woman apparently estranged from her husband, through her last year of life as she battled a cancer-type illness. Her young adult friendships with Miss Brandreth, Mrs. Groveham and Selina Heelis (begun in the1860’s), her close working and living relationships with Mrs. Epps and Mrs. Steinthal through her thirties and forties (1870’s and early 1880’s), her extensive work in her fifties (1890’s and into the 20th century) with Henrietta Franklin and Elsie Kitching represent several of the close female relationships within which Mason lived throughout her life (Chomondley, 1960).  Spencer (2010) suggests that Mason’s ability to work with women, to connect them and mobilize them into vast relational and productive networks was unusual for her time “and underpinned the success of her enterprise” (Spencer, 2010, p. 105).  Thus Mason’s sensitivity to the gentle power of the deep caring connection between Mary and Elizabeth is not surprising as she also had richly experienced such intimacies.

When Mason writes her words reflecting on the visit between these women she does so as a women of about 65 years of age after a decade or so of establishing numerous flourishing educational institutions and networks.  Although her organizational achievements were remarkable and their effects continue to resonate through our times, her biographer also reminds of the many interludes and quiet times of reprieve in pastoral and continental settings that Mason required for her health and well being.  “Three happy months the Holy Women held—in field, ‘mid lonely hills, on quiet roof—sweet converse” (Mason, 1908, p. 24).  From her own experience Mason understands and conveys the joy and refreshment found in quiet outdoor rest and conversation.

As is her occasional habit in this series on the Saviour of the World, Mason punctuates her ideas by directing her reader to two pieces of art which further convey the sensitivities that she is seeking to elicit.

The first piece that Mason suggests is The Visitation by The Master of the Life of the Virgin who is known to be a late Gothic German painter working (productive from c.1463-c.1490) in Cologne.  Although his name is not known his paintings are the most celebrated of The Cologne School of this time.  “The Visitation was a welcome theme for Christian painters because it allowed showing two wonderful women, both elegantly pregnant in the beginning stage only, so that pregnancy could be hinted at in all elegant grace. The scene is usually set in marvelous mountain landscapes since Elisabeth lived in hill country” (Dewil, 2010).  This version of the visitation is no exception in the tender elegant beauty with which the cousins are portrayed, their care for one another demonstrated in their touch.  This work reminds of the elegance of intimacy.

 

The second work that Mason offers in these verses is the Madonna and Child (c. 1440) by one of the leading painters of Early Renaissance Florence, Fra Filippo Lippi (c. 1406 –1469). Follower of Masaccio and teacher of Botticelli, Fra Filippo Lippi loved life in all of its fullness and painted more realistic subjects than were usual for his time.  This tender lush version of Mary and her child draws us into the intimate humanity of women and children, a communion that points to the ultimate of intimacies.

As educators continue in our times to expectantly probe Mason’s ideas for education much common tender talk continues to take place.  In the midst of our messy humanity, rich sympathies, caring connections and compassionate relationships grow.  In our own advent days of longing, of waiting expectantly for the coming of the Saviour of the world, Mason beautifully reminds and invites us to cherish the moments of common tender talk among a caring community of those emerging together in educational service.

References

Cholmondey, E. (1960/2000).  The Story of Charlotte Mason.  Hants, UK:  ChildLight Ltd.

Coombs, M. (Autumn 2009).  Puzzling over Charlotte Mason’s Date of Birth.  L’Umile Pianta.  Ambleside.

Dewil, R. J-P. (2010). The Visitation.  Located December 9, 2010 through The Art of Painting at internet:  http://www.theartofpainting.be/AOM-Visitation.htm)

Mason, C.M. (1908). The Saviour of the World, Volume 1.  At internet:  <http://www.angelfire.com/journal/SaviouroftheWorld&gt;

Master of the Life of the Virgin. (2010).  Accessed December 9, 2010 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_the_Life_of_the_Virgin

Spencer, S. (2010).  “ ‘Knowledge as the necessary food of the mind’:  Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education” in J. Spence, S.J. Aiston, & M.M. Meikle (Eds.) Women, Education, and Agency, 1600-2000.  London:  Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

“Meeting With Elizabeth”
by C. M. Mason
Book 1, p. 22-24
of “The Saviour of The World”
as found at http://www.Angelfire.com

St. Luke 1: 39 -46
“Magnificat”
St. Luke 1: 46 -56

Illustrated “The Visitation” by ‘Master of the Life of the Virgin’

MUCH troubled was the Maid-full of high hope
And diffident fear: nor might she tell her mind
To kin or neighbour, least of all, to him,
Her betrothed husband: so, with bold resolve,
She would go forth to seek among the hills
Of southward Judah for Elizabeth:
The friendly seraph, sure, had meant that she
Might ease her bosom in her kinswoman’s arms!

Little she recked of distance, lonely ways,
Of days of travel, footsore and distressed,
And nights of little ease: Mary made slow way
To the hill-city, Hebron, where she dwelt
To reach whom all this travail.  Entering the house
Of Zacharias, with sisterly salute, Elizabeth she greeted.
At her word,
Tumult of welcome whelme’d the poor Maid,
Lonely and travel-worn: when Elizabeth heard
Her cousin’s salutation, in her womb
Up-leaped the babe : and, full of the Holy Ghost,

With a loud cry she lifted up her voice
“Thou blessed amongst women, whence is this,
That the Mother of my Lord should come to me?
No sooner had the babe I bear thy voice
Heard, me saluting, than he leaped for joy!”
Then, fill’d with the Spirit of God, she blessed the Maid
“To her who could believe, shall be fulfilled
The whole of God’s high counsels.”  And Mary said : -

“My soul rejoiceth in the Lord,
My spirit triumphs in His word
He looked upon my low estate,
And, looking, made His handmaid great
To God, my Saviour, be the praise,
Who lowliest men doth highest raise!

“Henceforth the generations shall
Name me for Blessed, one and all
He that is mighty hath to me
Done great things, low though my degree
His mercy is for ever sure
While tribes and nations shall endure

“Holy His name, and full of grace
To them that fear, and seek His face
His arm with ready strength is found
To cast the high ones to the ground,
Scatter the proud, the meek upraise,
And nourish all their sheltered days

The rich go empty, and the poor,
Filled with good things, shall leave His door;
Princes from thrones He putteth down,
To raise those meek who be His own:
To His servant Israel brought He aid,
The promise He of old hath made : -

“That mercy should remembered be,
That Abraham his race should see
Countless as sand on the seashore,
Blessed by their God for evermore!
The promise that hath been of old
To Abraham and his sons foretold,
To kings and prophets dimly shown-
His secret-now, He maketh known:
The promised SEED is come, and I,
Poor Maid, by God, am set on high !”

“The Days of the Visit”
Book 1, “The Holy Infancy”  p 25 & 26
of “The Saviour of The World”
By C. M. Mason
as found at http://www.Angelfire.com

St. Luke i. 56
“Goeth forth as a Bridegroom” – Ps.xix.5
“Meek, sitting upon ass.” – Zech. ix. 9.
“He is led as a lamb to the slaughter.” – Isa. liii. 7
“Hills made low and valleys raised.” – Isa. xl.4.

Illustrated “Madonna and Child” by Fra Filippo Lippi

THREE happy months the Holy Women held-
In field, ‘mid lonely hills, on quiet roof-
Sweet converse, of those things the prophets spake
Concerning Shiloh, and him, should go before.
Not yet had Mary shaped her lips to the Name
That is above all names; but in her heart,
“JESUS,” she breathed, tremulous with delight
And rosy joy-awful, for amazement wove,
With fear, the weft across her warp of love.

And, many a time, would they to Zacharias
Look for interpretation; who would write,
Being mute, the thing they asked of him; for he
Was learned in the Scriptures, being a priest:
“‘Goeth forth as bridegroom, -shall Messias wed?”
‘Meek, sitting upon ass,’ is this the King?
‘He is led as a lamb to the slaughter ‘-not my Son!
Nay, holy man of God, this cannot be
The Ruler of His people shall not die
At the hands of the violent!” And Elizabeth,
“What meaneth ‘hills made low and valleys
raised’ ?

With many questionings came the Holy Women
And he, the priest, who knew himself full learned,
Astonished at their understanding, owned
Him ignorant before them ; but they held
Him wise.
Not all of themes, awful for woe,
August in dignity and suffering,
Or joyous beyond measure, did the two
Hold converse; but the common tender talk
That mothers use was theirs ; and — as they spake
Of breast and milk and little children’s pains,
Each could have said she heard a cooing babe.
Thus, for three months : then Mary returned home.

© 2010 Deani Van Pelt

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