Next up is a volume written by Deani Van Pelt and Camille Malucci entitled Charlotte Mason’s Great Recognition: A Scheme of Magnificent Unity. Mason describes in her book Parents and Children her trip to Florence where she encountered the frescoes of the Spanish Chapel in the basilica Santa Maria Novella. This event and its significance are the subject of this monograph. In roughly 70 pages, this addition to the Centenary Series provides ample information and insight into a key moment in the development of Mason’s philosophy of education.

Deani Van Pelt has been a leading voice in Charlotte Mason education, championing school choice in Canada and adding to our knowledge of Charlotte Mason through her research. The is the current board chair for the Charlotte Mason Institute and is Scholar-in-Residence in Charlotte Mason Studies, University of Cumbria, England. Van Pelt is not only the series editor of the 18 monographs in the Centenary Series, this book is one of two volumes she has had a hand in writing in the series. Co-author Camille Malucci resides in Williamsburg, Virginia and is a homeschooling mother of six. She is not only a Charlotte Mason practitioner, but also a student of her philosophy with a particular interest in the great recognition.

Visit to Florence in 1893

We have all felt the need for a holiday when after a time of great enterprise the body simply needs to be reenergized. The authors chronicle how Mason had been building a number of institutions such as the Parents’ National Education Union (PNEU) and the House of Education in Ambleside. In 1890 the PNEU began publishing The Parents’ Review, and the Springfield property opened in 1892. Such monumental efforts took their toll on Mason:

“The House of Education opened at Springfield, Ambleside, UK, in January of 1892 with four students, and this was also the year that she completed the last of her six geography volumes. Then, in early 1893 a period of illness began.” (18)

A three-month trip to Italy was therefore undertaken with her friend Julia Firth, who had recently begun to give Saturday morning talks at the House of Education. John Ruskin, whom Firth knew personally, had recently published a series of travel guides, directing readers to take in the great cultural artifacts on their visits to places such as Venice, Amiens and Florence. It was his Mornings in Florence (1875) that Mason and Firth used as they explored Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

The authors capture how this visit to Florence coincided with events in Mason’s life that made the visit to the Spanish Chapel such a poignant moment for her, especially as regards the ongoing development of her educational philosophy.

“Thus, the circumstances surrounding Mason’s standing in the Spanish Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Italy were probably characterized by a growing passion for picture study, a deep emotional ache, the satisfying exhaustion of establishing multiple institutions, and the imminent responsibility of maintaining and growing them.” (18-19)

It stands out that the methods deployed in Mason’s pedagogy, and in particular here we can focus on picture study, were not deemed only fit for children. She herself practiced these methods alongside children and teachers. Living ideas, at whatever age or stage of life we might access them, are a means to deep and meaningful insights into life. And this is exactly what Mason found as she focused her attention to the artwork contained within the Spanish Chapel.

The Frescos of Santa Maria Novella

As the authors trace the steps of Mason accompanied by Firth, there are several points they draw out that help us to see why exactly the frescos of the Spanish Chapel were so important to Mason’s educational philosophy. First, the Dominican order that commissioned the paintings were founded with a mission that emphasized education and study. These paintings were first and foremost inspired by this mission and therefore served as a means of inspiration and contemplation for the order. “As it was a room mostly reserved for the order, the paintings commissioned within it were aimed to remind the brothers not only about the story of Christ, but also the special mission of the Dominicans to bring Christ’s teachings to the people through education and preaching in the common tongue.” (19) There is an educational rationale behind the paintings’ provenance, a rationale that would immediately resonate with Mason.

A second important philosophical point centers on St. Thomas Aquinas. As a leading scholar and theological amongst the Dominican order early in its history, the frescos play out a philosophical point made by Aquinas in his work On the Unity of the Intellect, Against the Averroists. The ideas of Averroes (1126-1198) had spread in Western Europe and had promoted an anti-Christian dualism. The authors explain the significance of the Thomistic argument for both faith and reason working together.

“His argument for faith and reason being gifts from a good God, meant to work together for the good of man, would be conclusive and indisputable. He wrote that God wrote two books: the Book of Creation, available to all, and the Book of Scripture, available to those willing to accept divine revelation. This was a unified vision of knowledge and its appropriate uses.” (23)

The unified vision of knowledge would have a profound impact upon Mason’s thinking that she call “the great recognition.” We shall see that this is one of the driving forces in her epistemological statement regarding the “science of relation” or the educational philosophy that all areas of knowledge are related to one another.

A third point draws upon the schema portrayed by the artist Andrea di Buonaiuto. Virtually every surface is covered with paintings organized around the principle of the unity of knowledge that emanates from the mind of God and points back to God. The authors walk us through the four walls and vaulted ceilings following the steps of Mason and Firth with quotes from Ruskin’s guide—north, east, south and then west. The western wall is the culmination of the theological and philosophical expression represented on the walls. The eyes begin at the point of the vault where the Holy Spirit descends upon Mary and the apostles, beneath whom the devout of every nation are gathered (29).

The combined frescoes—The Descent of the Holy Sprit in the vault above the west wall and The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas on the west wall—make a theological statement in a highly organizes manner, as ranks upon ranks of individuals cascade down the wall. The authors devote attention to each grouping, particularly those on the west wall. The theological and cardinal virtues (31-33) fly above the seated Aquinas (33-34), who is flanked on either side by biblical figures (34-36). Bowing at Aquinas’s feet are three heretics whose errors are refuted by the teachings of the church (36). Below the biblical figures are two sets of seven thrones upon which are seated figures representing the seven sacred sciences and the seven natural sciences (36-38). Below these allegorical figures are historical individuals associated with each science. There is a handy appendix with a table of all the figures in the fresco (68-70).

We have rushed through some very interesting detail to arrive at one of the main points the authors dwell on having to do with the seven liberal arts. Among the important points made by the authors are that, working from the outside in, the trivium is listed as grammar, rhetoric and then logic. They write:

“Note that the fresco does not list Rhetoric, the ability to speak and persuade, as the third aspect of the trivium, as do other classical versions of the trivium. It is speaking that leads to clarity of thought. One wonder: Is this another reason for Mason prioritizing oracy and narration in her educational philosophy?” (40-41)

It is a point well made, although one also wonders whether the liberal arts have always had an amount of flexibility in them such that we should be cautious about making too great a point about the ordering here. One can equally question whether the rigidity with which some classical educators hold to grammar, logic and rhetoric as stages was somewhat fabricated in the famous Dorothy Sayers essay. Bonaiuto’s fresco should go some way towards revising our thinking to see that these arts fit into a larger schema such that each component is in a sense interwoven with the others (whether that be horizontally with the other arts and sciences or vertically with biblical revelation). Our authors conclude this section with an explanation of the quadrivium—music, astronomy, geometry and arithmetic—alongside the trivium (41-44). Together the natural and sacred sciences make for a wide and varied curriculum that “represent the Book of Scripture and the Book of Creation.” (36)

The Great Recognition for Mason

Mason’s visit to Santa Maria Novella had an indelible impact on her emerging philosophy of education. By the time of her visit, Mason had only written the first volume in her education series, Home Education (1886). We learn of her visit to Florence in the second of her six volumes on education, Parents and Children (1896). The visit to Florence is clearly still present in her thinking in the third volume, School Education (1904) as well as her final work, Towards a Philosophy of Education (1925). Certainly this moment in time arrested her attention such that something crystallized in her thinking about education.

Van Pelt and Malucci develop a number of key insights in the Great Recognition. The initial insight has to do with the emergence of scientific atheism that powerfully altered the aims of education after the Enlightenment and had especially taken root in the Victorian era in which Mason worked. The Great Recognition cuts across the dualism of the era, creating a sacred-secular divide. They quote Mason, “Many of us are content to do without religious education altogether; and are satisfied with what we not only call secular but make secular, in the sense in which we understand the word, i.e. entirely limited to the uses of this visible world” (Mason, Parents and Children, 270). Mason certainly had her finger on the pulse of a dangerous problem in education for society and had gained insight when she encountered the frescos in the Spanish Chapel. The authors rightly highlight the importance of this moment in Mason’s philosophy:

“She knew this was a false dichotomy. She had noted the dove in the tip of the vaulted ceiling, over all—implying an often neglected source of unity.” (Van Pelt and Malucci 45).

God, then, is the source of all knowledge, and all truth emanates from him as it exists in all creation (general revelation) as well as in scripture (special revelation). Mason realized that a secular educational enterprise was not being honest with itself at a deep epistemological level.

The authors provide another interesting insight based on the role of the liberal arts. The Latin root word, liber, means free in the sense that a liberal arts education is one that makes one free from bondage. Anyone who has read the autobiography of Frederick Douglass understands this principle inasmuch as he considered he had gained freedom through self-education well before he was emancipated from slavery.

There was once a sense that the liberal arts were intended for those who are free, meaning the leadership class or those who were free from the constraints of financial dependence. But Mason envisioned an education available to all, or an education that is liberally spread throughout all society.

“It [liber] is where we derive our word liberty from as well. A liberal education makes a person free from the shackles of ignorance. She also uses the word catholic not as a religious term, but because it means universal. This is an education for all: men and women, rich and poor, people of all backgrounds and races—just as we see at the top of the fresco, it is for people of every nation (Acts 2:5).” (46)

Alongside this vision of a liberal education from all, we have a spiritual affirmation that the Holy Spirit is the one who accomplishes the work of teaching. There is an intimacy one notices about this claim, as each individual can have live-giving knowledge presented through the inner work of the Holy Spirit. Mason’s educational philosophy views God as an active agent through the ministry the Holy Spirit who is active in all areas of knowledge. “The Holy Spirit, in His infinite wisdom, is ready to tend to each soul for the entirety of its lifetime and offer knowledge, consolation, wisdom, and peace with abundant measure.” (47) The authors consider this the “golden thread” of Mason’s teaching and writing. “The Holy Spirit is our teacher and we find not only ultimate unity in this Trinitarian God, but also unity on earth when we recognize the reality of His Lordship here.” (48) As the authors demonstrate in a brief coda to this section, there is multiple attestation to these theological principles through the Bible and the many Christian traditions that would find value in Mason’s voice today.

Conclusion

Van Pelt and Malucci have written an accessible and exciting treatment of one of the most important moments in Mason’s development as an educational philosopher. In a little over fifty pages we are taken along a journey with Mason to examine the frescos of Santa Maria Novella afresh. I appreciate their closing sentences:

“This fresco has spoken to generations of viewers spanning 570 years. It continues to invite us—each in our own generation—to engage its wisdom as it points us toward the recognition and promise of a magnificent unity.” (56)

Perhaps this volume will entice you to study Mason in greater depth, to explore the Great Recognition for yourself and your school, and to examine not only the Florentine frescos but numerous other works of art for their inherent inspiration for our contemplation of the truths that God has disseminated throughout his creation.

Are you ready to bring narration to your school or to implement habit training? Bring one of our trainers to your school. Visit our consultation page to learn more about our one- or two-day faculty training packages. Email us for a free initial consultation.

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We might posit the source of this confusion in the modern turn to pragmatic considerations as the main focus of educational theory. Or we could note the human tendency in general to focus on a part of the truth, the need for a student to be prepared for a job, for instance, as if it were the whole of education. We set our sights too narrowly on a certain educational outcome and miss the forest for the trees. We can detect these problems in Mason’s diatribe on the topic:

We do not sufficiently realise the need for unity of principle in education. We have no Captain Idea which shall marshal for us the fighting host of educational ideas which throng the air; so, in default of a guiding principle, a leading idea, we feel ourselves at liberty to pick and choose. This man thinks he is free to make science the sum of his son’s education, the other chooses the classics, a third prefers a mechanical, a fourth, a commercial program. . . . 

Everyone feels himself at liberty to do that which is right in his own eyes with regard to the education of his children. Let it be our negative purpose to discourage in every way we can the educational faddist, that is, the person who accepts a one-sided notion in place of a universal idea as his educational guide. Our positive purpose is to present, in season and out of season, one such universal idea; that is, that education is the science of relations. (Mason, School Education, 160–161)

I am grateful to Karen Glass for pointing out this passage in her book In Vital Harmony: Charlotte Mason and the Natural Laws of Education (23). This diatribe is remarkable for Mason’s insistence on a harmony, coherence or unity to the philosophy and practice of education. Her allusion to the biblical book of Judges reinforces her point that confusion and disorder reign when a guiding law is not followed. Salvation from the oppression of educational faddism can only be attained by a Captain Idea, a Judge, who will unite the tribes and marshal the hosts to restore right worship of the divine. 

The tone of religious authority for such a “guiding principle” is further reinforced by her second biblical allusion to the apostle Paul’s instruction to Timothy:

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (2 Tim 4:2-4 KJV; emphasis added)

The danger of faddism is clear in this passage as well, which describes “itching ears” of those who will not continue in sound Christian doctrine. Mason has made herself the Apostle of Educational Philosophy in beginning to propound her sovereign principle: education is the science of relations. 

To understand Charlotte Mason as Educational Philosopher par excellence, it will be helpful to consider two battles she fought in the war of educational philosophy. One of these was near to home and involved Mason defending her own turf for leadership of the Parents National Educational Union (PNEU) against Lady Isabel Margesson. The other involved a confident Mason going on the offensive through a newspaper article review of Maria Montessori (Have you read Patrick Egan’s article comparing Charlotte Mason with Maria Montessori?). Each of these battles reveals something unique about Mason’s relationship with the classical tradition and new educational movements of her day.

Battle #1: The PNEU Identity Crisis

Lady Isabel Margesson represented a major challenge to Charlotte Mason’s leadership of the Parents National Educational Union. In part, the seeds of controversy had already been sown from the union’s founding. After Charlotte Mason’s breakthrough at Bradford with her Home Education lectures (later revised into the book Home Education) and the founding of the first parents union there and then in London, the PNEU constitution was written in such a broad and general way, that it is not surprising that conflict would arise over the direction of the organization. The issue in this case concerned the importance of the new educationists or modern reformers, like Herbert Spencer and Friedrich Froebel.

In the first edition of Home Education, Mason had explicitly endorsed these educational reformers, a move that she would come to regret (as seen by the fact that she excised the comment in later editions). Mason appealed to natural law and the emerging sciences of physiology and psychology as important sources for parents and teachers in the education of their children. In doing so, she struck a chord with the late Victorian mood. Herbert Spencer, however, as one of the most famous English philosophers of her day, also had coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” and propounded social darwinism, in addition to his “idiosyncratic take on non-coercive upbringing, parental defects, good health, and the sound Pestalozzian education in which [Mason herself] had been trained” at the Home & Colonial Training College. With Froebel, the disciple of the Christian Romantic educator Pestalozzi, she was at least on more clearly Christian ground, even if the Kindergarten play-way methods were still controversial. Charlotte Mason was walking a tightrope by endorsing traditional conceptions of habit training and character development and these new educationists.

Lady Isabel was an aristocratic member of the Belgravia branch who advocated for a strong endorsement of the new educationists. By 1892 she had already been conducting classes in her area for parents on Froebel, Pestalozzi, Locke, and Spencer. The PNEU executive committee pushed Mason to include her essay, “What Is the P.N.E.U.?” in the Parents’ Review magazine that Mason edited to promote the organization. In the winter of 1894 Mason departed for Florence, Italy, as a sabbatical of sorts for her health. While she was gone Lady Isabel made her move. She pushed through a number of reforms that would centralize PNEU operations in London and which effectively excluded Mason’s Bradford supporters who could not appear regularly there for meetings. Her goal seemed to be to remake the PNEU along explicitly new educationist lines. 

When Mason returned from her inspiring trip to Florence in May 1894, she became aware of the looming threat. She received Lady Isabel at her home in Ambleside to assess the situation, and wrote to Dr. Schofield who was one of her close allies on the executive committee.

Lady Isabel is charming, her ardour and enthusiasm a pure delight—but the rush with which she takes things is appalling. I well understand it must leave the Committee panting. The situation seems to be this— the Froebel people have got hold of Lady Isabel & are endeavouring to use her, & our Society through her, as an agency to advance KG [i.e., kindergarten] principles and work. For a whole day we contested the point—! The discussion was a little feminine and droll. At one moment it was—that I had drawn all our P.N.E.U. teaching out of Froebel & was to be honoured as an interpreter of that great sage—The next moment, I had not read, did not understand Froebel & that was why I held aloof! I think the talk did some good . . . but they both cling to Froebel as a mystic who has said the last word on Education. In fact I think they rate him with Wagner and Ibsen amongst the “eternities & immensities.” . . . We managed to agree a sentence to be submitted to the Committee—“Herbert Spencer & Froebel supplemented by the progressive scientific thought of the day”– though personally I should rather we boldly claimed to originate our own school of educational thought, hanging on, not to the educational reformers—but to the physiologists of today & the philosophers of all time, but I trust all to the Committee—only we must be on the alert. (Quoted in Margaret Coombs, Hidden Heritage and Educational Influence, 181-182)

A few points stand out from this masterful letter of political positioning. First, Mason’s skillful positioning of Lady Isabel and her friend as rushed innovators, who engage in hero worship of Froebel, gave her own contingent a stronghold of philosophical strength. By refusing to contest Froebel, she left Lady Isabel on the offensive and made her into an outsider insinuating the interests of another organization (“the Froebel people”). Her mockery of Lady Isabel’s extreme endorsement of Froebel resonates with Mason’s later distaste for faddism. 

The subtle suggestion she makes, while conceding a sentence on Spencer and Froebel, that she and the other PNEU founders had originated “our own school of educational thought” was perhaps her master stroke. If nothing else, it foreshadows the role she envisioned for herself, which the PNEU later recognized, as the PNEU’s resident educational philosopher. We can note here that she defines her stance not with the educational reformers, but by a synthesis of modern research (“the physiologists of today”) and “the philosophers of all time.” 

In the end, Mason won out and the 1890 constitution was retained, leading Lady Isabel and her followers to resign from the executive committee. The PNEU identity crisis resulted in Charlotte Mason taking a clearer stance as an educational philosopher in her own right, and with the tradition of classical or liberal educational philosophy. 

Battle #2: Confronting Scientism

Charlotte Mason engaged in another battle much later on in her life, when she was the established Matron of Educational Philosophy for her movement. She had recently published six fiery letters in The Times called The Basis of National Strength, where she prophesied doom for a material education not centered on living books and ideas. A scientistic pedagogy developing the “faculties” of children but void of living and imaginative content was gaining steam.

In 1912 Mason took on Maria Montessori through a review in a public journal (Have you read Patrick Egan’s article comparing Charlotte Mason with Maria Montessori?). Mason criticized Montessori for her “neglect of books, and her utilitarian, scientific pedagogy, which segregated children in simplified environments while denying their personalities” (Coombs, Hidden Heritage, 229). As she wrote in The Times Educational Supplement, 

The Montessori child . . . sharpens a single sense to be sure at the expense of a higher sense but there is no gradual painting in of the background to his life; no fairies play about him, no heroes stir his soul. God and good angels form no part of his thought; the child and the person he will become are a scientific product.

Charlotte Mason, “Miss Mason and the Montessori System,” in The Times, 3 November 1912. Quoted in Coombs, Hidden Heritage, 229 (see also 305n39). The article can be accessed online here.

The problem with scientism and materialism in education is that they are literally soul-killing. For Mason, modern education has lost something essential to humanity from the imaginative, poetic and religious traditions of humankind. “It is on this basis that Mason rejects the notion of training the faculties that was utilized by traditionalists and progressive educators alike in their war over the utility of classical languages and higher mathematics. In her view, reducing the mind to various faculties had little support from the latest research of her day, and it collapsed a Christian philosophical understanding of mind as spirit.” (From the author’s forthcoming Charlotte Mason: A Liberal Education for All, 39)

Perhaps Mason herself explains it best in her Towards a Philosophy of Education:

Our errors in education, so far as we have erred, turn upon the conception we form of ‘mind,’ and the theory which has filtered through to most teachers implies the out-of-date notion of the development of ‘faculties,’ a notion which itself rests on the axiom that thought is not more than a function of the brain. Here we find the sole justification of the scanty curricula provided in most of our schools, for the tortuous processes of our teaching, for the mischievous assertion that ‘it does not matter what a child learns but only how he learns it.’ If we teach much and children learn little we comfort ourselves with the idea that we are ‘developing’ this or the other ‘faculty.’ (12)

Here Mason the educational philosopher outflanks the materialists and scientists of her day and explains how raising a faulty philosophical banner (the faculty theory) results in dangerous educational practices. Educational ideas have consequences and children bear the brunt of this faddism that results in “scanty curricula” and little learning, when students could be narrating from living books.

Charlotte Mason is a unique figure in the history of educational philosophy because of how she is able to draw from different streams and yet “marshal… the fighting host of educational ideas” to engage in polemic when necessary. She sounds a clarion call against faddism and for educational philosophy, not neglecting modern resources, but also not abandoning the tradition of the great “philosophers of all time.” To learn more about Mason’s life and thought, make sure to preorder my book with Classical Academic Press, Charlotte Mason: A Liberal Education for All!

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