Detailed Description

Despite her problematic family background, Charlotte Mason was both lucky and highly intelligent. Perhaps inheriting her life-long determination to achieve from her Quaker father, Charlotte learnt much from her pupil-teacher training linked to Holy Trinity parish in Birkenhead. Following a shortened teacher training at the Home and Colonial Training college and an infant school headship in Worthing she tested out early educational ideas and she became established as both a writer on home education and as the co-founder of the PNEU and founded the House of Education for governesses in Ambleside. This conferred her social standing and enabled Charlotte’s developing educational ideas to reach beyond higher-class homes into state schools. However both her need for and gift for friendships did not prevent her from crossing swords with those challenged her ideas. Happily, Charlotte peacefully ended her life at the height of her acclaim. Her remarkable reticence had kept her secrets intact.