Sunday, September 13, 2009

What Was the Parents' Review?



Did you know that Charlotte Mason founded schools across Victorian England? If you thought she was solely related to home education, that fact might come as a surprise to you. After all, in recent years she's been crowned the "founder of the homeschool movement". It is true that many mothers taught their children at home using Miss Mason's methods, but, yes, she founded out-of-the-home schools as well. To give you the super quick run down, her schools were originally formed as Parents' Review Schools (PRS), while later the titles evolved into what became known as Parents' Union Schools (PUS). Got those acronyms down? Good, because there are a few more :)

Before the inception of the first Parents' Union School, however, Miss Mason formed a club of sorts with parents and likeminded educators. This club sprang out of a series of lectures Miss Mason presented, detailing her educational philosophy and calling for change in England's educational system. The club was called the Parents' Education Union - later, the Parents' National Education Union. That's right! The PNEU :) Sound familiar?

We all know how deeply Miss Mason believed in the absolute necessity of ongoing education and she fervently wished to equip parents and educators to teach thoughtfully "for the children's sake". Before long, a magazine (with articles written by PNEU members and edited by Miss Mason) was published regularly in effort to keep the PNEU unified and focused. Can you guess what it was called? That's right - The Parents' Review (PR).

Whew.

Can you narrate all of that back to yourself after a single reading? ;)

I mention all of this because I plan to take a close look over the next few weeks at several PR articles available through Ambleside Online. Before all that, I wanted to make certain everyone was clear on what the PR even was. AO's advisory has graciously permitted me to link directly to these pages. If you would like to do the same, I encourage you to ask their permission as well.

For those of you interested in a more in depth look at the Parents' Review, you might enjoy reading the synopsis AO offers or consider taking a look at the reproduced issues Karen Andreola has available for purchase. Or, for a more general overview of Miss Mason's work, the Wikipedia article is actually pretty thorough. Shhh... don't tell, but I used it to double check my chronology :)

More to come.

Have a wonderful day!

6 comments:

Heather said...

Just wanted to say that I'm really glad you're back to blogging. :-)

Unknown said...

me too

Jacci said...

Thanks, guys :) I'm looking forward to digging into some good CM!

Natalie M. said...

Hi Jacci! Glad to see you're back to bloggging. I'm looking forward to those Parent's Review articles. After hemming and hawing these last months, I finally decided to set up a blog for us. Not much there yet, but I'll be adding as I find time. Here's a question for you: Are there some rules or etiquette I should be aware of regarding linking to other people's sites, etc? Thanks a lot!

Jacci said...

Hi, Natalie! Good to hear from you. I'm not as well versed in blog etiquette as some, but I can give a few pointers. The *BIG* thing to remember is to never take someone's work and attempt to call it your own (clearly, you wouldn't do that anyway!). But, if you want to paraphrase someone else's thoughts or quote them in length on your blog - it's always better to ask first. Same goes for using someone else's images. Just send a quick email and ask. I think it's also nice to ask if you intend to link to someone else's posts a lot on your own blog. This is just to keep things from being "weird". Many bloggers follow internet sites that link to them (there are web tools for tracking like this) and it's always a little funny to find a blogger who apparently *loves* your blog and links to your posts, but has never introduced herself or commented. I link to Lindafay and AO more than anyone else. I received permission from both :)

HTH!
Jacci

Natalie M. said...

Thanks Jacci! Very helpful. :)