Linda McMahon is a woman on a mission: to make American education great again.
The Secretary of Education’s commitment to “reverse our national decline with a hard reset,” involves a multi-pronged plan: placing the task of running the nation’s schools back in the hands of the individual states, loosening regulation and oversight, expanding charter schools, reducing the stranglehold of the leftist teachers unions, and restoring faith in test scores and grades (at a time when grades are under assault even at prestigious institutions like the University of Michigan). And perhaps most importantly, she’s determined to empower parents to make educational choices for their own children.
Restoring trust in mothers and fathers is key. “Parents,” McMahon posted on X recently, “We’re with you.”
Trusting parents and putting them in control of their children’s education is one of the places where McMahon’s educational agenda overlaps with the British 19th-century reformer Charlotte Mason, the hero of modern homeschooling in America.
Charlotte Mason (1842-1923) may be the homeschooling community’s best-kept secret, but her theories and teachings could also dramatically improve the much wider population of government-run schools. “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life,” she famously said. Formulated in the late 1800’s, Mason’s approach of decentralizing education, and making it independent of government control, centered around cultivating a child’s love of literature, art, music, and nature.
It is also heavily focused on trust, applied both to children and their parents. Beginning with her theory that “Children are persons,” Mason placed a strong emphasis on respecting the individuality and capability of each child. “The children, and not the teachers, are the responsible persons; they do the work by self-effort,” Mason wrote in A Philosophy of Education.
Mason strongly advocated trust not just in children but also in their parents, who she believed played a vital role in shaping a child’s character and education. Rather than shutting them out—a practice common in today’s government-run schools—she encouraged mothers and fathers to lean in and trust their instincts. “Parents should trust themselves more,” Mason wrote. “The mere blessed fact of parental relationship and that of the authority which belongs to it, by right and by nature, acts upon the children as do sunshine and shower on a seed in good soil.”
Mason strove to create a lifelong love of learning. If children developed an appetite for ideas at an early age, she reasoned, it would sustain them through life. Her philosophy was that in addition to nutrients needed to thrive, children require ideas to chew on, to properly grow and develop.
In contrast to today’s government-sponsored education, where much of the curriculum either expounds the ideological agenda of the Left, or is incredibly dull, Mason believed the best resource for these ideas was books of “literary quality” or great books. “[F]or the best thought the world possesses is stored in books; we must open books to children, the best books,” she explained.
Modern experts agree. Meghan Cox Gurdon, a “Free Expression” columnist for The Wall Street Journal, and the paper’s children’s book reviewer for 20 years, recently wrote, “great books are compelling, [they] have a quality of universality and are, at some level, truthful. Good books teach moral lessons, but they don’t moralize. The thing about great children’s books is that you can read them (or look at their illustrations) again and again and always come away feeling refreshed.”
Rather than utilizing textbooks in the classroom, Mason advocates the use of classic literature, or what she terms “living books”: books written by a single author (not a committee), which engage the mind, rather than simply present material to memorize. Selections for early readers could include Winnie-the-Pooh, All-of-a-Kind Family, and Charlotte’s Web. Middle school children could be offered titles like Treasure Island and Little Women. Novels such as The Hobbit, Jane Eyre, and Great Expectations would be appropriate choices for high school students.
By advocating the idea that children are capable beings, responsible in large part for their own learning, Charlotte Mason believed in putting our trust in them—and their parents.
What is the key to reforming our badly flawed education system? Loosening federal mandates and regulations will help, but empowering and trusting parents is crucial, as is returning to great books and great literature as the core of the curriculum.
The bottom line is, if we want to talk about making American education great again, we have only to look back to the theories and teachings of Charlotte Mason.
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