Charlotte M. Mason

Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason (1842–1923) was a British educator whose ideas still guide many schools and home educators. Orphaned young, she trained as a teacher and taught for years before publishing Home Education (1886), a series of lectures to mothers. She founded the Parents' National Educational Union and in 1892 the House of Education at Ambleside in the Lake District, which trained governesses and teachers in her method. Mason held that children are born persons and should be educated through living books, narration, nature study and good habits rather than drill. Her final statement of her method was An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education.