The idea that education involves discipline isn’t surprising to most readers. But considering education an “atmosphere” or “a life” might strike contemporary parents and educators as more unexpected or even mysterious. Yet it speaks to the characteristic expansiveness of Mason’s approach.

For her, a true education stretched to encompass the entirety of a child’s encounter with the world, like a tree spreading its branches. To achieve this, Mason believed that children’s souls needed to be awakened through an encounter with knowledge.

While notions of education today are likely to evoke images of classrooms, workbooks, textbooks, and GPAs—all of which are confined to one important but limited type of learning—Mason’s ideas of education aren’t restricted to industrial education.

In the Mason model, education is more about human development—the full flourishing of the human person—than about test scores and career training.

As Cindy Rushton wrote in “A Charlotte Mason Primer”: “True education takes place in real life. When we begin to see all of life as a classroom, we will truly equip our children to become self-educated, life-long learners, who delight in learning.”

This article briefly introduces Mason’s educational thought, a paradigm that harkens back to older forms of learning. These older methods look beyond vocational training (without neglecting it) to the broader horizons of what it means to be a well-rounded human being.