The early 1900s was a watershed moment in education. The second wave of the Industrial Revolution brought about what we might call the educational-industrial complex. Here I intentionally draw upon Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address when he warned against the disastrous potential of the military-industrial complex. Looking back over the previous decades of global warfare, he saw how the industry-fed war machine would never be satiated. Something like this happened in the field of education. Industry, an expanding economy and globalization demanded of education a new kind of production-line format. School buildings began to resemble factories graduating a populace ready-made for industrial work. We can call it an educational-industrial complex, because industry and education became cyclically involved in one another. We see this most prominently with the introduction of high-tech classrooms, not because education requires this technology, but because students have become the customer base of tech companies. Putting tech like iPads in their hands means these students are now future buyers of their products. Perhaps I am a bit cynical here, but it is not a stretch to say that modern education’s fixation on technology has not produced astounding results in educational outcomes.

Against this backdrop, alternatives to conventional education were developed in remote locations. Already by 1900, an abundance of thought was emerging that addressed the concerns of how the Industrial Revolution was transforming education in negative ways. In this article, I will trace the work of two rather different ladies whose lives paralleled one another for a brief span of time. We will consider the influence of these two ladies and reflect on what we can draw from their pedagogical teachings. The two ladies I have in mind are Charlotte Mason and Maria Montessori.

Charlotte Mason: Creating an Educational Alternative in England

Mason preceded Montessori both in age and in her work. Charlotte Mason was born in Bangor, Wales in 1842. Mason entered into teaching as a young lady, eventually developing a vision for education summed up in the phrase “a liberal education for all.” She began a series of books on pedagogy starting with Home Education in 1886 and concluding with Toward a Philosophy of Education published in 1923, the year of her death.

It was around the time of publishing Home Education that she founded the Parents’ Educational Union (P.E.U.) in Bradford, a small industrial city in Yorkshire that specialized in woolen textiles. This location gave her an opportunity to apply her educational principles in a working-class environment. Mason soon attracted a number of adherents in the form of teachers and homeschool mothers. Her organization soon expanded, becoming the Parents’ National Educational Union (P.N.E.U.) in 1890.

After eleven years teaching and training in Bradford, Mason moved to Ambleside where she would help develop a teacher training center. Scale How, a building that is now part of the Charlotte Mason College of University of Cumbria, became the hub of a growing educational movement in the UK. The movement grew beyond Mason’s personal involvement as several of the teachers she mentored launched publications, training centers and conferences elsewhere in the UK.

Mason established an enduring legacy by writing about her pedagogical ideas as well as pouring herself into teachers, governesses and mothers who came to her for training. Her work carried on through those she mentored after her death in 1923. Our friend Jack Beckman, professor of education at Covenant College, shares stories about interviewing former P.N.E.U. teachers during his studies in England in the early 2000s. He conveys how devoted these ladies were to Mason’s principles, particularly the importance of narration. We know very little about Mason’s life, and this is in part a reflection of her devotion to her educational principles, which we’ll explore a little further below.

Maria Montessori: Creating an Educational Alternative in Italy

Born in 1870, Maria Montessori grew up in a newly unified Italy. In 1875 her family moved to Rome the designated capital of the Risorgimento. Montessori attended the University of Rome studying medicine with an emphasis in pediatrics and psychology. After university she worked with children with mental disabilities. During this time, she developed her thoughts about special methods of education while reading works on pedagogy. Her work caught the attention of the directors of the Orthographic School, which trained teachers to educate children with mental disabilities. She began developing a method of instruction that helped children with mental disabilities to pass the same public exams as mainstream children.

By 1906, Montessori shifted all her efforts to fully realizing her educational methods in mainstream schools. Her Casa dei Bambini (House for Children) featured classrooms specially equipped to carry out Montessori’s methods. We will explore her philosophy of education and methods shortly. She showed a great devotion to observing children to understand how children developed and what materials had the greatest impact in their development. Much of her thoughts at this stage were published in Method of Scientific Pedagogy (1909 in Italian and then translated into English in 1912 under the title The Montessori Method).

Montessori’s methods expanded throughout Italian primary schools. Like Mason, Montessori sought to establish her schools in industrial and impoverished neighborhoods. Her methods attracted international attention, and she was invited to England, the European continent, and the U.S. Unlike Mason who remained in northern England all her life, Montessori traveled and lived abroad. She would eventually settle in Amsterdam, although she lived in India throughout the time of WWII. Initially during the Fascist rise to power under Mussolini in the 1920s, Montessori was able to implement her training courses with government sponsorship. By 1930s, however, ideological tensions brought an end to her role in Italy. She left Italy in 1934 and almost all Montessori-related educational programs were rooted out by 1936.

During her stay in India, Montessori corresponded regularly with Gandhi. With a global war raging, Montessori’s thoughts turned to the role of education in promoting peace. Montessori presented lectures on “Education and Peace” promoting early childhood education as the key to reforming society. Her lectures were published in the book Peace and Education in 1949, and she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize that year as well as in 1950 and 1951. When Maria Montessori died in 1952, she had built an enduring legacy through an international network of schools and training centers under the auspices of the Association Montessori Internationale.

A Comparison of Educational Methods

These two pedagogical thinkers share several common ideas, although we’ll see that they differ in some striking ways. For one, both of these educational philosophers share a commitment to viewing the child holistically. Mason, for instance, writes:

“A child is born a person with a mind as complete and as beautiful as his beautiful little body, we can at least show that he always has all the mind he requires for his occasions; that is, that his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind.”

Charlotte Mason, Towards A Philosophy of Education, pg. 36

Mason was how the child does not become a person later in life when they achieve some level of education. Instead, a child is full of every capacity to engage with a life of learning. Compare this with Montessori’s perspective:

“It was the discovery of the deeper nature of the child, for when the right conditions were established, the result was the spontaneous appearance of characteristics which revealed not a portion but the whole personality. I must affirm once again that they were not the consequence of a determined or a pre-established plan of education.”

Maria Montessori, Citizen of the World, pg. 12

This affirmation is so important to understand. We as educators are not making children into people, we are providing them with the tools of education that engage every aspect of their personhood already present in the child. There is an innate aspect to the personhood of the child that both educational philosophers found important.

Both Mason and Montessori emphasized the atmosphere or environment of education as one of the tools of learning. Mason considers atmosphere in socio-emotional terms:

“They are held in that thought-environment which surrounds the child as an atmosphere, which he breathes as his breath of life; and this atmosphere in which the child inspires his unconscious ideas of right living emanates from his parents. Every look of gentleness and tone of reverence, every word of kindness and act of help, passes into the thought-environment, the very atmosphere which the child breathes; he does not think of these things, may never think of them, but all his life long they excite that ‘vague appetency towards something’ out of which most of his actions spring.”

Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, pg. 36

Montessori seems to agree:

“There can be no doubt of the fact that a child absorbs an enormous number of impressions from his environment and that external help given to this natural instinct kindles within him a lively enthusiasm. In this way education can be a real help to the natural development of the mind.”

Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child, 261

But here we can also see how the two start to diverge. Mason criticizes the artificial transformation of the child’s playroom or school room:

“We certainly may use atmosphere as an instrument of education, but there are prohibitions, for ourselves rather than for children. Perhaps the chief of these is, that no artificial element be introduced, no sprinkling with rose-water, softening with cushions. Children must face life as it is; if their parents are anxious and perturbed children feel it in the air.”

Charlotte Mason, Toward a Philosophy of Education, pg. 97

Montessori, however, introduced into the classroom a number of specialized materials that were appropriately sized to children. These she intentionally made out of natural materials so that there was a natural aesthetic about the classroom. In Montessori’s thinking, children learned best by working with materials instead of being directly instructed by a teacher.

The divergence grows as we differentiate Montessori’s “scientific education” from Mason’s “humane education.” I pull these designations from Mason’s review of Montessori published in a letter to The Times Educational Supplement on December 3, 1912. Mason’s critique of Montessori is that:

“’Education by things’ is boldly advocated, regardless of the principle that things lead only to more and more various things and are without effect on the thoughts and therefore on the character and conduct of a man, save as regards the production or the examination of similar things.”

Charlotte Mason, “Miss Mason on the Montessori System,” pg. 52-53

Mason concludes her review with the central tenant of her method:

“Because a child is a person, because his education should make him more of a person, because he increases upon such ideas as are to be found in books, pictures, and the like, because the more of a person he is the better work will he turn out of whatever kind, because there is a general dearth of persons of fine character and sound judgment,—for these and other reasons I should regard the spread of schools conducted on any method which contemns knowledge in favour of appliances and employments as a calamity, no matter how prettily the children may for the present behave. Knowledge is the sole lever by which character is elevated, the sole diet upon which mind is sustained.”

“Miss Mason on the Montessori System,” pg. 53

Charlotte Mason promoted the power of ideas as best conveyed through great books. This and only this can raise the character of children. Now, to be fair to Dr. Montessori, 1912 was an early stage in the development of her ideas, when Miss Mason produced this evaluation of her method. However, as I read Montessori’s educational philosophy, I don’t see a substantial development of her understanding of the key tools of education beyond this. The peaceable kingdom she sought during and after WWII was based on a constructivist philosophy of education that emphasizes independent discovery activated by the learner. Her assumption in the innate goodness of children meant that they would naturally learn self-discipline. In this way, we might say Montessori has perhaps most fully realized Rousseau’s educational vision.

This last point on self-discipline pulls in another key difference in perspective between these two educational philosophers. Mason saw that discipline is one of the tools of education, and to this end she promoted habit training. This is a method whereby the teacher or parent enables the child to acquire a practice (like brushing teeth daily) or a virtue (like sharing with others) through simple instruction and regular support. Montessori proposed that children would attain discipline through physical work with objects, through activities like pouring water or sweeping up. She writes:

“When work has become a habit, the intellectual level rises rapidly, and organised order causes good conduct to become a habit. Children then work with order, perseverance, and discipline, persistently and naturally; the permanent, calm and vivifying work of the physical organism resembles the respiratory rhythm.”

Maria Montessori, The Advanced Montessori Method, Vol. 1, pg. 85

Assessing the Alternatives

The need for an educational alternative came about at a time when educational reform pushed schools away from its mooring in the classical liberal arts. The technicism and scientism of conventional education remains to this day, which is why it is worthwhile exploring the works of early advocates for genuine alternatives. Let’s consider a few of the high-level concepts that can guide us today in our educational renewal movement.

To begin with, both Mason and Montessori highlight the importance of the personhood of children. It is not our place to make children into something, instead we receive into our classrooms people made in the image of God with tremendous intellectual and moral capacity. Our work is to care for the life of the mind and feed our children with nourishing ideas. Caring for the content of great books that will sustain the intellect and moral character of the children is similar to providing nutrient dense meals to help their bodies grow. The Christian and classical tradition provides us with an ample supply of nutrient dense books.

The concept of character is clearly a goal for both Mason and Montessori. Our classrooms should be places where students strive after character. Montessori seems to have placed too much trust in the innate goodness of children. Mason seems to take a more realistic view of the child’s capacity for good or for evil. This strikes me as the more biblical paradigm. Left to herself, the child is prone to miss the target. Obviously teachers trained in the Montessori method care for and guide their children, but I think Mason’s method of habit training provides a more sustained level of support to cultivate virtue in the child. Mason is not far off from the classical tradition as Aristotle teaches that moral virtue is learned through habit and practice. The biblical tradition also points to virtue that is cultivated through diligence (2 Pet. 1:5) as we follow our Lord Jesus Christ, walking “in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10).

Finally, we need to be clear to distinguish the locus of learning energy or power on the part of the child from what is called child-centered learning. As we have developed the intersection of Charlotte Mason pedagogy and classical Christian education, the concept we’ve brought forward is the shift of the energy in the classroom away from the teacher (i.e. lecturing) to the learning (i.e. narration and discussion). The role of the teacher, then, is to carefully direct the learning energy toward idea-rich texts that capitalize on the child’s natural hunger for knowledge and joy in learning. Child-centered learning, on the other hand, usually focuses on developing the problem-solving skills of the child. Child-centric learning emphasizes the independence of the learner, but it normally results in an education without any clear goals. Mason is clear that education is about feeding a child’s love for knowledge within the proper authority structure of the teacher-student relationship. We can see how this is consistent with the biblical mandate to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Prov. 22:6).

For many years I have been curious to explore Maria Montessori’s work. My sense is that there is likely more overlap between Charlotte Mason and Maria Montessori than I have been able to uncover in this article. The distinction between the two, though, is abundantly clear to me. Mason seems to be fully grounded in the Christian and liberal arts tradition. Montessori seems to break with the tradition in ways that would not be consistent with the classical Christian movement. I think at points the popular understanding of Montessori as a nature-loving, child-centric model of education has influenced people’s understanding of Mason. Hopefully this comparison of the two helps open a greater discussion of the distinctives between the two.