New Information coming out of the Charlotte Mason Digital Collection
A Plenary Session at the 2012 ChildLightUSA Charlotte Mason Education Conference
By Meghan Van Pelt and Deani Van Pelt
The early volumes of L’Umile Pianta are becoming available this year through the Charlotte Mason Digital Collection. For the first time ever, “The Plant”, as it was fondly called, will be readily accessible to readers using digital formats worldwide. In this session several of the persons who worked with the documents preparing them for the digital collection will share and discuss various aspects of this magazine that has served for over a century to connect graduates of Charlotte Mason’s House of Education. Although it continues to be published to this day, the emphasis of this talk will be on contents of L’Umile Pianta in its first quarter century of publication. The original purposes for the magazine will be considered and an overview of its various components and how they changed over time will be offered. We will introduce the people that were important to the success of L’Umile Pianta and will place special emphasis on the writings of Mason in this magazine and the teaching tools, instructional tips, and book ideas that were shared. We will conclude with an analysis and discussion of the continuing contribution the L’Umile Pianta may have for Charlotte Mason educators today.
Dr. Deani Van Pelt with daughter Meghan Van Pelt
Meghan Van Pelt will be entering her third year as a history and political science student at Redeemer University College, Hamilton, Canada, where she was the first recipient of the Justin Cooper Political Science Scholarship. She thoroughly enjoys her part time work in the Peter Turkstra Library at Redeemer on the Charlotte Mason Digital Collection and has fond memories of the two weeks she spent working in the Armitt Library and Museum in Ambleside, England . From Grades 1 to 8 her homeschool education was informed and shaped by Mason’s philosophy of education and thus from a young age she has loved the study of art history and ancient philosophy and cultures. Currently a soprano with the Redeemer Concert Choir, she has enjoyed choral singing and playing violin since she was 7 years old.
Deani Van Pelt is Associate Professor of Education and Director of Teacher Education at Redeemer University College where she teaches courses in social and legal foundations of education. Formerly a secondary school math and business subject teacher, she is endlessly animated and inspired by the opportunity she has had to work with the Charlotte Mason Digital Collection. Her master’s thesis, Charlotte Mason’s Design for Education, and her doctoral dissertation, Stories of Secession: Choosing Non-State Schools in Ontario, as well as her work on the Cardus Education Survey, an international study of the academic, spiritual and cultural outcomes of private religious Protestant and Catholic schooling in North America, have afforded her many opportunities to speak, write, and think about aspects of education that are close to her heart.
© All Rights Reserved – by Meghan and Deani Van Pelt
